Point & Shoot
by BlueMeadow
Summary: Two people. Two houses. One field. Sometimes anger is so much better than sorrow.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

The sirens went off at midnight.

The wind had been blowing up from the south ever since the sun rose, flattening the fields as it howled across the prairie. It began with a creep of noise that snuck in through the tiny cracks between the window sills and the panes, rattling the glass with a high-pitched whisper. By evening, that sly, whining sound was demanding to be heard—screeching through the screen door, moaning through the floorboards, wailing like a baby left out in the open.

Crying for a mother who had left it there on purpose.

Abandonment issues, that wind.

I knew enough about those sounds to recognize them.

The television had been nothing but gloom and doom all day. Those tight-lipped newscasters in their polyester and their pearls, helmet-haired and cement-faced, as they delivered the end of days. Oddly detached, handing down their warnings as though talking to paper cutouts instead of living, breathing people.

Get your flashlights, they said. Get your pets and your bottled water and spend the night under the stairs. Crouch down in the basement. Huddle up in the bathtub. Just wait it out, they said. There's nothing to do but wait. Wait and maybe beg or wish or pray the world doesn't flatten all around you. Hope the eye of the storm looks down and sees you in that bathtub with your cat and your anxiety and your dinky little flashlight against all of that great big swallowing darkness and that it passes you by.

I killed the television with a twist of the dial and curled up in my bed as evening fell. The knowing never helped. I still twisted my sheets around my legs. Still wrapped my throat around a raging ball of fear while I waited for that familiar wail. The wind had me coiled up in nervous cotton sheets and itchy wool anxiety.

By the time the sirens finally chimed in, I was crawling out of my skin.

The newscasters had told us to stay safe. Stay inside.

I went outside instead.

In a nightdress and nothing else because I didn't understand self-preservation, or maybe I just didn't care about it.

The screen door was slapping and the sky was green, dismal emerald clouds boiling down angry and hot from an indigo sky. The air was humming, and the wind was still blowing, bellowing now—less abandoned baby and more trapped, bloodied animal desperate to get free. I was no match. It tumbled me like an empty plastic bag right up against the old wooden fence at the edge of the overgrown yard; air smashed out of my lungs, and my fingers dug deep into the rotten wood, lodging splinters beneath my nails.

I clung to the fence, buffeted by the wind, hanging on for dear life.

It really was beautiful. That sounded so ridiculous, but it was the truth. The colors and the wailing and the way the grass laid flat against the ground. The way my hair blew sideways, and my skin crawled with electricity, prickly and tight. The sputtering rain hit like ice-cold needles; the evening sun swallowed whole, nonexistent, as though it had never even been there at all.

Flashes of lightning illuminated a wind monster eating its way across the prairie, ravaging the flatlands with teeth and claws.

Starving fingers reached for the earth, trying to make a landing.

The lights in the house went dark; the power wiped out. A group of cows floundered by, running ahead of the wind, eyes rolling in terror, their bellows of fear lost in the caterwaul of the storm. The monster was yanking at my nightdress, tugging it from my shoulders and pushing it tight against my skin, pulling hair from my head and tears from my eyes. It pawed at the shingles and gnawed on the sagging porch. The shutters were clamoring, the ivy was being torn from the siding, and the screen door wouldn't last long, the way it was banging around.

The storm could take the house for all I cared. It could have it all.

It could take the creaky, stone-smooth floorboards and that terrible, peeling wallpaper. The refrigerator that groaned like an old man with a bad case of gout. The bed I was born in, the one that creaked every time I breathed or blinked, much less rolled over. The lock on the front door that was too rusted to actually function. The flaky paint and the creaky windows.

The stain on the carpet in the hallway… the storm could definitely take that.

It had been seven days. Seven days, twelve hours, and fifteen minutes. I was still waiting for her ghost. Seven days and I was still walking around that spot of the carpet on tiptoes. I still held my breath with my eyes shut tight until I was safely on the other side, pressing my back up against the wall to slink around the edge as though it was actually a hole in the ground that led straight to China. Or to the hot molten center of the earth.

Or Hell.

The storm could take the carpet. And the stain. And the genetic mindfuck.

Good riddance.

One last giant roar of air knocked me flat on my back, the monster's mouth descending around me. I scrabbled to my feet and ran for the house, the shelter of the porch. Bolting headlong through the grass as that fork-tongued tempest took a long, slow lick up the underbelly of the forlorn Midwest.

* * *

 **Hey there!**

 **HB and PB here…**

 **If you haven't checked it out yet, the wonderful ladies at TLS hosted our sneak peek, and it'll give you a bit of a timeline of how this whole thing came to be, and almost not be! This story took four years to complete, through the ups and downs of real life, and we're really excited to finally share it with you.**

 **We could not have done this without the incredible group of women who have dedicated their time, love, and effort to us. We'll keep it brief here, but expect us to get really sappy over them at the end.**

 **LayAtHomeMom is our pre-reader, Hadley Hemingway and CarrieZM are our betas, and we were blessed to have such a stellar group of minds and hearts working alongside us. These three amazing women came together as a team, and many many MANY details had to be ironed out to find the best way to attack this project. They accomplished this monumental task seamlessly and with gusto. Thank you all for your patience, friendship, grammar skills, and insight. Our gratitude towards you three is beyond measure, and our words of love feel completely inadequate.**

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 **Enough rambling.**

 **We hope you enjoy this journey with us, and thank you for reading!**

 **HB &PB**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

They say home is where the heart is.

Well, I had no heart, and this wasn't really my home.

But I thought maybe I'd try to fix one of those things.

The faded pink-red walls around me held shadows of missing picture frames. They mocked me, screamed at me to cover them, but I had nothing to share. Certainly nothing I fucking wanted to, not from what I had packed in the boxes I'd shoved deep in the attic. Paint would suffice or maybe an artist's print or some tacky velvet Elvis—some shit like that.

In my former life, I'd go out and create something new, something beautiful, but that thought quickly left me. I had no desire to try to figure out what that "new" would be.

Besides, there were bigger things to worry about in this place than decor.

This place, this white house grayed from age and life, with its damaged clapboard and rusted hinge shutters—it fucking knew it had a sucker in me. Its old-world charm and the surrounding desolate stretches of land said I was its owner, so I bought it right then and there, hoping it would give me something to do now that I didn't do… that.

I wandered around the floors, taking note of what I would fix until my stomach growled, reminding me I hadn't eaten since the rest stop five hours ago. All I had was some canned goods, so I heated some soup in an old saucepan. It was hot and burned my tongue when I gulped too fast from one of the china bowls that lived in the cupboards, the chip in the side telling me it had as many brushes with life and death as I'd had. I was happy to have the marred bowls and set of cracked cups to use.

Besides the ghosts in the attic, I owned nothing, and nothing owned me, and I liked that.

I _chose_ that.

Wandering onto the porch, I tried to find the calming sound of a bubbling creek I'd been told existed on my property, but the breeze was rattling wind chimes that clanked and hid any other sound. I knew those were coming down as soon as I had the chance. I didn't know the house or the wind chimes' owners, didn't know why they chose the ones they did—a lighthouse, a rusted one of a tea kettle with spoons and forks for pendulums—and that was okay. I didn't need to know. I'd picked my first home from a list of five pictures sent my way by email instead of house-hunting like normal people. Rose knew me, knew I needed something to fix that would occupy my mind and my hands, and she found it. Moved me and my pathetic amount of boxes in her Jeep by herself in one trip. My whole life fit in a damn Wrangler with the top down.

Even though I didn't get to meet the previous owners—an elderly couple carted off years ago to a place that would take care of them until they eventually died—I liked the fact that someone _had_ been here a long time. They'd lived here forever, had babies here, possibly on the maroon couch that sat in the front room. I wondered if I'd ever use that area because who needed a "front room" anyway, but fuck if I wasn't happy I could spend two nights in a row in there if I wanted to. In the same damn place.

The only thing I felt compelled to hang, a crisp American flag with its fifty white stars, white stripes, and red gashes, went up as soon as I'd found cord sturdy enough to keep it stretched across the paint-chipped pole jutting out of the soil at the bottom of the porch stairs. It was an impulse purchase in a gas station, the same place I bought the soup.

It flapped outside in a wind that was too quiet. A wind I wasn't used to. This wind was calm, peaceful. The kind laughter rode in on, not the hot kind that carried screams. I watched that flag and thought about why I bought it because you don't _have_ to own one, but now that I did, I let it fly. Even if it burned a hole in my gut each time I looked at it.

I stared at it all afternoon as the wind blew it steadily higher, not from war, not from people waving it above their heads as they celebrated or protested, but from an eerie presence that crept in as the air grew thicker. I thought to take it down just in case, put it with the boxes up above, but family and "honor" and brothers in the ground made me showcase it like the fucking country tells you you're supposed to. Besides, maybe the rain would wash its corrosive meaning away.

I was still on the porch an hour or so later when the wind picked up for real, and I listened to the rustling and crackling from the vast field of corn and weeds that made up my backyard. The constant, monotone din was a foreign sort of lulling sound that hadn't reached my weary ears in a decade. It almost made them hurt like when you ascend in an airplane, and the pressure builds and builds until you can't hear anything at all BUT the silence pressure creates. Taking another pull on my beer and tipping the creaky, wood rocker back, I watched the gray clouds roll in. They were relatively tame to my eye, unlike the brown dust and debris clouds that eat you.

Fucking catastrophe clouds that I knew so well.

The storm was turning into something big, and I welcomed it. The not-quite-there-yet rolling thunder mixing with the whispering fields soothed me, and when the first drops hit, I held my hand out from under the covered porch, testing their velocity. I followed my hand with my tongue, like a child, wanting to taste what pureness was. It wasn't the taste of rain mixing with despair or poison, and I thought of maybe getting a barrel to collect such perfect water in, to do something farm-like, but I didn't know what that might be.

When the lights blinked and the house threatened to lose power, I went to bed. Exhausted by myself, lulled by the howling wind and angry rain falling on the tin roof. I lay there wishing for sleep to come like the dead who filled my dreams.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

I woke to sunshine and silence—tangled in my nightdress and crumpled in the grass. My fingers were pincushioned with splinters from being ripped off the fence by the wind. My hair was as chaotic as those clouds had been last night, full of static and frantic energy. My bones hurt. My head was in a fog. My mouth was dry and sticky, and my heart ached something fierce.

I blinked to clear the haze.

The house was still standing, looming over me, casting a big black shadow across the grass. The two unblinking windows upstairs were still intact. The porch sagged a little on one end, but it was still attached. Some shingles had been blown loose, but the roof was still on. The screen door was hanging lopsided, but it hadn't been torn completely off.

That spot on the carpet was probably still there too.

 _Dammit_.

Sparrow had told me a legend about a woman who could cleave the storms: a cyclone person, a whirlwind. The thunderbird, with her knife plunged into the dirt to carve the storms in two. Split the clouds, cracked the wind, shielded her home and her people from destruction. Somehow, I felt like her knife.

Piercing the dirt, cleaving the storm.

Preserving that godawful house.

I sighed in defeat. Somehow, the hope that everything would get blown away, including myself, made the reality of the same old situation feel a thousand times worse. I flopped back down into the grass, pushing my face away from the sunshine into the clover and purslane and alfalfa. It smelled twice as strong as usual, rubbed raw all night long by a windy, rough-edged lover, then left to bake in the sunshine afterglow of the next morning. Unbearably green and fresh and alive. I dug my fingers into my eyes, trying my best not to wail like that abandoned wind-baby.

I came nose to nose with something wet.

Something small and shivering and breathing.

Big brown eyes. Long dark lashes. Giant velvet ears. A constellation of white speckles littered down its back. A long, delicate face and a wet nose, black as coal, sniffing me inquisitively. It was huddled up against me in the grass, gangly legs tucked beneath itself, its chin on my shoulder. We lay there blinking at each other, me and that little fawn, for a long, long time.

"Hi," I mouthed, no sound, moving slowly to touch a single finger to its ear. The sunshine filtering through the skin illuminated a web of veins, flimsy and fragile, but the fawn didn't flinch. It leaned in toward me to set that wet nose back against my neck, soft fur and baby breath brushing my skin. I slipped my entire arm around it. Hugged it to my belly and felt its heartbeat skitter against my own. A million beats per second, both of us. The fawn cuddled closer, digging sharp hooves into the soft black dirt as I wondered where its mother was.

I knew for certain she wasn't coming back for it.

I talked to the fawn for what felt like hours, feeding it flowers and soft tufts of grass as I dumped all of my loneliness and solitude and overworked anxiety into the still morning air around us. I made long looping chains of clover and phlox as I told it about the house, the mid-century foundation poured by my great-grandfather, and the garden planted by my mother. The mother everyone said I took after. I gave the fawn a headdress of salt cedar and sweetbrier roses as I told it about her, the woman who went from majestic falcon to broken bird in one fell swoop of a gun barrel. I tucked bluebells into my hair as I told it about all the talking that happened in town, the whispers around corners and the mutterings behind my back: the "there goes Bella Swan with her heavy baggage" gossip that followed me wherever I went. I never went anywhere at all anymore. I crushed lemon balm between my fingers as I told it about the doll in the last room at the end of the hallway upstairs. Cried when I told it about that spot on the carpet, the one I wished would just swallow me whole already.

I told it that, sometimes, I had dreams about wandering into the prairie at night and letting it eat me alive.

Those sirens had been a lie. The newscasters had been full of shit. This was no tornado. I'd made it up or wished for it or fantasized about it so hard that it very nearly happened. But it didn't. The prairie was just as calm and peaceful as it had ever been before. The sun was shining in that way it always did after a storm, quietly deceiving. The sky around it was big and empty as though nothing had happened last night, tranquil and nonchalant, crisscrossed with the faint trails of airplanes, not a single cloud in sight to mar the great big brush of blue. The prairie was nothing but birdsong and too much sunshine. There were a few trees lying haphazardly, and the fields were flattened, yes, but there wasn't a trench of turmoil suddenly ripped through ground. There were no far-off sirens echoing from town or helicopters dropping aid and supplies like the last time a tornado ripped through here.

Jack and Millie's, the house across the way, the nearest sign of humanity even though it had been empty for years, was still standing.

This was no tornado. Tornados were sly and swift and impossible to sneak out from underneath. They trailed up behind a wall of wind and clouds, dropping their death fingers to the earth with surprising stealth. They didn't hit you until it was too late. They took everything and tossed it skyward and left just as quickly as they came.

I wanted a tornado, but I only got a storm. I wanted the house flattened and my feet picked up off the ground, my body flung somewhere far, far away. Wanted the remains of my disastrous life to be sucked up into the sky and spit out in a mile-wide trail of wreckage, littered across four states in unsuspecting backyards. What I got was a trick tornado. A fabricated hoax. A mad dash of hope followed by a crushing reality.

The sweet taste of salvation marred by the bitter sting of an almost-cyclone.

I stayed sprawled there all day in the grass, pondering my utterly fucked situation. Nothing had ever been normal, but whatever routine I'd established had been knocked off the edge of a very flat earth. It wasn't much, but I had found ways to survive: losing myself in picture books pilfered from Sparrow. Wishing for black mountains, for white beaches, for green jungles.

Anything, anywhere, but this goddamned brown prairie.

I'd never get far enough, no matter how fast I ran.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!  
**

 **HB &PB**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

 **Edward~**

* * *

With the light of morning came reality, and in that reality came relief. The dreams that plagued me were over, banished to uneasy sleep for another eighteen hours.

The smell of coffee shook off the cobwebs from another dark night and urged me out of bed. I put on the few civilian clothes I owned, the ripped shirt and worn jeans of any Joe Schmoe working around his house, and entered the kitchen as the pot was finishing. Patting myself on the back that I'd successfully programmed the machine, I filled a flowered teacup as much as I could before I stepped out onto the front of the gray-washed wraparound porch to survey something I'd never had.

Land I owned. Land that wasn't destroyed, temporary, or sad.

There was nothing across the road. Nothing to the left or right of me. Just barren farmland that had been used up or made infertile, and I loved that I was completely alone.

I had another itch to do field work. Harvest vegetables or milk cows or build a barn from scratch or some shit. Using muscles and hand-forged tools like in depressing movies where they have nothing. I looked up, and the storm from the night before had been replaced by big blue sky, and the sunshine had all but dried everything up. I felt good, strangely serene and secure, as I took a big, clean mouthful of air and sucked it deep into my lungs.

I hummed it out, content to have the noise I made be the only human sound for once. I sipped my coffee, then walked around and looked at parts of the porch that needed fixing, letting the rustling of the tall grass in the field behind me time my breaths in and out, in and out.

But the grass wasn't all standing stately and shifting with the breeze when I turned to look at it. Sometime in the night a clearing had formed, land flat as pavers created some sort of opening. I moved to the other end of my wide porch to get a better view of the mouth on that thing and saw a lane, cut on a diagonal, leading directly towards another house. A dilapidated, gray blemish against the bright blue sky.

I slurped loudly, my eyes narrowed in frustration at the fact that if I could see this house clear as day, they would be able to see me as well. I tried for a while to regain the feeling of freedom I'd just about reached before I'd noticed this unwelcome development, one I was pissed the realtor hadn't mentioned, when I heard it.

A sort of groan and a crackling in the grass that was not from the gentle wind alone.

Inherently freezing at the sound I assumed was distress, I tried to assure myself that it was just the foreign sound of nature, my own mind trying to trick me. A mind that wasn't yet willing to let go of everything I was trying so hard to get rid of. Draining my cup, I stared at the field feeling angry that I couldn't just bask in the solitude of my blank thoughts. When the sound came again, I sighed and took the creaking wood steps two at a time, out to prove that I was, in fact, making it up and hearing ghosts.

Empty cup in hand, my bare feet felt the dead hay that had flattened in the night, and I cursed my brain as it switched automatically from peacefulness to combat mode, senses high and on alert. _It's my job to follow_ screamed my old sense. _It's not your job anymore_ cried my new one. I went down that lane anyway as I heard the repeated sounds of movement and something that I was relieved sounded like an animal, but I stopped short when I heard murmurs of… something else.

I inched forward, accompanied only by the listing sound of my own movement until my heart jumped in my throat as the next sound met my ears.

Was that a _human_ voice?

I paused before continuing, my soft gait changing and beginning its learned shuffle, ignoring the prick of the sharp ends of dead grass that cut my feet. They stayed close to the ground on instinct, instead of stepping because that's what you do. You never know what or who you might be stepping _on_. The shuffling sound also served as a warning to give whatever demon that lay in wait in front of me the chance to leave. My head snapped up a moment later in the direction of a sound on my right, and I left the path, my body slicing through the tall grass.

The sound came again from out in front of me, something or someone caught there in the shoulder-high grasses. I pushed apart the wall in front of me with one hand but saw nothing, so I went further in, the sound of the weeds swishing closed behind me, trapping me in and revealing what I'd instinctively felt needed to be found.

A circle had formed, the flattened grass much like the path that I followed to get here, but an area I couldn't see from the porch. And in that circle, was a girl.

She was curled there, in a white sort of dress that didn't match the era we were in. Her hair was in chaos, tangled on the trampled hay, and there was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She lay completely still, and my first thought was that I hoped she wasn't dead, but I knew _something_ had made the sounds. I studied her a moment to see if I could detect any sort of life, and then something moved, but it wasn't her. I squinted and craned my neck to figure out what it was, what my mind was trying to show me, and then I saw.

Nestled in her arms was a brown fawn, its tiny, shivering body snuggled up against her. I stared at it as it stared at me, and suddenly the thing turned, concentrating on the girl who was whispering to it, smiling at it. And fuck me if that animal wasn't smiling back at her. Then the unnatural mother holding this animal turned, and her hair shifted, forming a halo around her with little white flowers and green bits of foliage caught in its web. It was a sight so natural in its unnaturalness, so worthy of existing, I nearly choked.

I felt dizzy, nauseous at the fact that for the first time in months, I wished for the camera that I'd amputated from my life because I knew that this would've been the one picture I'd hang on that goddamned wall.

It would have captured life, not death.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

When I was little, I used to twirl my hair around my finger until I cut my circulation off. Knuckles tangled up in a knotty mess, inevitably pulling strands loose as I worked myself free. My mother used to tease me about being half-bald as a kid and called it my nervous habit. I did it when I was sleeping. When I was eating or reading or hiding.

In all reality, it was my anxiety. Which meant I'd been anxious my whole damn life.

I spun a curl around my finger while I watched the fawn. It was smelling the edges of the living room, nosing deep into the cushions of the faded couch. Sniffling every dusty corner and every creaky piece of furniture, sneezing all over the place. It paused in the hallway, glancing around with its nose in the air before it looked back over its shoulder at me. Hooves at the very edge of that spot on the carpet as though it didn't want to go any further.

"Where's your mom?" I asked as I leapt over that spot in the hallway, headed for the kitchen. The fawn leapt over it right after me, scampering at my heels. I filled a pretty china bowl with water and set it on the floor at my feet. The glass was painted with roses, rimmed in gold, delicately fragile and only for company use. Which meant that it never got used at all.

This little thing might be a fairy. Or a skinwalker. Or a figment of my imagination, just like that tornado. Whatever it was, it probably qualified as company.

There was a can of powdered baby formula in the pantry, stashed on the back shelf, way past expiration. While I warmed up some water, I dropped a few strawberries into the empty bowl because I had no idea what else to give it. The fawn licked the strawberries into a mash and pressed its sticky sweet nose to the backs of my knees as I mixed the formula. It left pink smears across my skin under the hem of my nightdress when I poured the warm milk right over the strawberry mash.

As the fawn ate, I glanced out the window. The trees were blown half-naked, the grass pushed flat, the landscape bare enough to get a good view of that lonely house across the way. The sky was stained sunset colors, pink and yellow and baby-boy blue, and the black shadow of the house was suddenly illuminated from within as the lights went on.

There was someone in there.

 _Moving_.

I tried to remember the last time I'd seen anyone in that house, but it had been so long. Millie and Jack hadn't made it much beyond my twelfth birthday. They were shuffled off to a nursing home while their house was left to rot on its own. I had no idea if it had sold or was being rented out, hadn't even bothered to look for a sign or the sudden presence of a vehicle there, too wrapped up in my own misfortunes to worry about someone else's.

The back door of that old, abandoned house opened, and I ducked. Instinct. It had me crouched against the cabinets, gripping the edge of the sink with both hands. I edged forward to peek back over the window sill just in time to see someone emerge from the house. A man. Tall, broad-shouldered, and barefooted. I leaned further over the sink, nose to the glass, as I peered through the window pane, trying to get a good glimpse at this new neighbor. He hesitated just before he stepped into the last fading rays of sunlight, toeing the line that slashed the shadows across the porch. As he finally stepped across, I got a decent look at him.

A ragged mop of rusty hair.

A straight back and broad shoulders.

An eyepatch.

The deafening slam of my front door startled me breathless and sent the fawn skittering, slipping on the flower-patterned linoleum as it upturned the bowl. It cowered beneath me, trembling between my knees as I turned to find Jasper standing in the hallway, right over that spot on the carpet like he didn't even care. He was wearing the same faded flannel shirt he'd worn twice this week and looked like he had been out in the fields all day: sun-baked and windblown. Hands in his pockets, hay between his teeth, and that long, feral hair falling in his face.

He was eyeing the fawn, looking suspicious.

"What'cha got there?" he asked slowly, raising his eyes to mine as the fawn peeked out from between my legs, the hem of my nightdress caught in its ears. Its nose was flaring, still covered in strawberry mash as it craned toward Jasper, sniffing the air, but not leaving the safety of the space between my feet.

"I found it. Or... it found me."

"Where's its mother?"

I shrugged, watching as Jasper dropped to his knees, one hand held out in front of him. Even though his skin was baked brown by the sun, the palm of his hand was a soft pink. He curled his fingers and spoke softly, beckoning toward the fawn. "C'mere, little guy."

"It's a girl," I said as the fawn took one hesitant step, nose still flaring, the hem of my dress slipping back over its ears.

"How'd you guess that? You look between its legs?" Jasper squinted up at me with a slight grin on his face. He knew well enough that I hadn't. If Jasper was anything, he was the one who did the dirty work around here, like looking between the legs of animals. He was two years older and twenty years smarter than I was, lean and sleek and beautiful, good with his hands, an easy smile when he wasn't scowling at my broken fence lines or the overgrown ivy up the side of my house. I hated that scowl. Jasper was taking care of his sick mom and four little kids because his dad was a deadbeat who skipped town with a girl not much older than Jasper himself.

He had enough on his plate without my mess on top of it.

"Why are you all the way out here? Your mom put you up to this?" I narrowed my eyes at him. Alice Whitlock had made it her mission to see me clothed and fed and warm in the absence of my own mother. I'd seen Jasper more in the last six days than I had in the last six years.

"Can't believe this place is still standing." Jasper ignored me, raising a fist to rap his knuckles against the doorframe. I was surprised the house didn't groan. "Some storm, huh?"

"Yeah, some storm."

"You got a new neighbor cross the way." He hooked a thumb to the right, tilting his head in the direction of the not-so-abandoned house before arching an eyebrow and scanning me, foot to forehead. "You better start dressing decent."

I glanced down at myself. I didn't know what he saw exactly, but if you asked me, I looked like a goddamned disaster. Blown bare like the trees. Sagging like the porch. Flattened like the grass. I hadn't bothered to brush my hair yet. Hadn't washed my feet or my face. The ribbons that were strung through the neck of the nightdress had been blown loose, fluttering around my shoulders, and the cotton was dirty around the hem. I hadn't taken it off in six days.

I fisted the nightdress in both hands, stuttering around threatening tears and that traitorous wobble in my throat. "It was hers."

"I know that. I've seen her in it. It's pretty, something real old and sweet about it that reminds me of my Nana." Jasper's smile melted back into that scowl, eyes darting toward the newly occupied house on the horizon. "But I don't want a stranger looking at you in it."

"No one is looking at me," I mumbled.

"I am. And I can see right through the damned thing."

* * *

I snuck across the field at midnight.

The light in the old house had gone off an hour ago, and even though I tried to leave the fawn, it had no intention of being left. It picked its way nimbly through the darkness beside me, glow-in-the-dark spots of white through the gloom. I was still in my nightdress, still barefoot, impaling my feet on the shorn off grass.

I fell twice. Tripped in the dark but kept going.

The fawn pranced around the yard while I peered in the window of the downstairs bedroom, but I couldn't see anything through the gloom. I tiptoed onto the porch but only leaned up against the backdoor, ear to wood, listening for the sounds of breathing. The lonely house felt different. No longer an ignorable anomaly on the horizon, but something that suddenly held a whisper of promise inside. A dormant heart shocked back to life.

The flagpole in the yard, the one that had stood empty and forlorn for years, wasn't empty anymore. Now crowned with an American flag, it hung limp in the still of midnight, the stripes bent and the stars all broken up. There was an overgrown clump of milkweed at the base of the pole, big bunches of pink flowers with pale fleshy leaves, a mere brush or broken stem oozing sticky, white wounds.

The ground was burning, or I was, or the whole earth was on fire, standing there at the base of the flagpole in that freshly dug up dirt. My soles itched, the scratch of a walked-over grave tickling my feet, as I pulled one of the ribbons the rest of the way from my nightdress and tied it around the flagpole like an apology. Picked the fawn up and made my way home. Didn't sleep at all that night.

Soles sticky with the blood of milkweed.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

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 **HB &PB**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

I glared at that ribbon for a long time.

I had to assume it came from deer girl as that ribbon looked like the same faded color of the loose ends that were hanging off that odd dress she wore. I furrowed my brow at the offensive material again and guessed that girl was probably my nearest neighbor, the one I was angry about in that house across the way. The one Rosalie hadn't mentioned when I'd told her I wanted solitude. The one I stared at too long once I found her in the grass. I left her in that circle noiselessly as she continued talking to that damned animal and tried not to think about them all afternoon.

I tried to distract myself from that image of them together in the grass, the one that had taken my breath away. Her hair laid out around her like sunshine, her knees bent and exposed, her soft face, slightly pink as she spoke to that thing. I'd even gone so far as to try and forget that image by arguing with myself, debating about going to the attic to look for something to hang on the walls, but I won that battle, and the attic remained unvisited.

My attic struggle preoccupied me, let me forget for a while that I didn't help her. Them. I had left that clearing deciding they were okay and made the conscious choice to not do anything about them. It was a bitter, routine decision, and as I stared at the ribbon, I couldn't stop thinking that I wished I'd gone about it differently. Just like so much else.

I frowned at the last cold sips of my morning coffee left in the bottom of the same cup I'd been using and looked over at the spot in the field I had been blissfully unaware of when I stood here yesterday. I couldn't _help_ but notice it now. A fucking blemish in the tall grass I'd hoped would cushion me from anything around. There was no sound fighting with the bubbling of the creek now, so I assumed she went back to the gray house. After she tied that ribbon, maybe.

Not wanting to see it anymore, I turned to the right, to the ramshackle shed that looked like it had been built by Mr. Windchimes himself, rickety and leaning like I imagined him to be. That was all I wanted around me. Just that worn, blue shed. Not that fucking sad house over there that apparently had life in it.

The small town wasn't far; I knew from passing through it with Rose, and I decided to get started with my plans to make this house new, make it mine. The realtor told Rose and me when we stood on this porch that the previous owner was a collector, and I might find his antique bicycle in that shed, mashed inside somewhere with rusted car parts and tools. She said this as she looked at the black patch over my eye, when Rose told her I would be out here alone, no car.

The realtor had offered to be my chauffeur, and I knew she was offering more, but Rose thankfully squashed that for me, telling her as soon as the doctor in town gave me the green light, she'd arrange for me to get something. I just nodded in reply, not bothering to say I doubted I would—machinery not something I wanted. I'd had enough of Humvees and helicopters delivering me where I had to go; I was looking forward to using my feet.

The barn-like doors creaked loudly when I pulled them back; the sound of rodents scurrying at the unfamiliar light of day barely registered as I began to poke around. After a scratch to my hand and some bricks falling on my feet, I found that bike she had mentioned. With a little grease still wet in a half-empty oil can, some air for the tires, and a couple of tightened screws, I rode that squeaky bike all the way to the little town that housed what you were supposed to need out here.

I loaded up on anything I could transport back on the handlebars and around my neck: a few groceries and toiletries, but mostly some brushes and four half-full cans of someone's leftover paint the guy at the hardware store sold to me for a discount. Once I settled on a color, I knew I'd have to carry one or two full cans back at a time in the rusty baskets on either side of the back wheel or walk it, but that was fine, I had nothing but time to use up.

When I arrived back to the house, sweaty but spirits lifted from the physical activity, I left those cans on the grass to the left of the porch where I figured a good test spot would be. I rushed through putting the groceries away, anxious to get to work. Glad to have something to do with my camera-less fingers.

Opening a beer, I went back to the shed to get the little radio I'd spied earlier. I'd grabbed a flashlight and some batteries in town, and I was happy I'd guessed the right size for the little transistor. After securing them in place and snapping the black plastic closed, I turned the dial and heard the whine of AM frequency. Scrolling through slowly, I picked up hisses and pops, hearing the strains of distant voices as I got closer to something. I fiddled and moved the antenna around, stepping out from the shed to give me a better shot at it. The notes of big band music hit my ears, and I figured that would be as good as I'd get, so I adjusted it on the floorboard of the porch close to where I was going to work, settling on Glenn Miller and his "Moonlight Serenade."

Flipping the lids off all four cans, I stood back to assess. Sky blue, emerald green, sunshine yellow. I'd looked at the brown at the store, emblazoned with the name "Fawn" but passed that one up quickly, choosing a berry purple instead that now stood beside the yellow. I looked at them all and shrugged, deciding that the house would tell me which to choose.

My brush stroked blue against the twelve inch board closest to me, knowing it was just a test, painting over the grime of Kansas life well-lived. Nail heads and bumps from older coats of paint raised the surface and made it imperfect. Figuring I'd applied enough to decide, I rinsed the brush in the spigot jutting from underneath the porch and put the green on the board directly under the blue. I stepped back, unsure, because Lord knew I'd never had to choose anything permanent, rinsed the brush again and did the next board in the yellow.

Under that came the purple, and there it was, a fucking mosh of color in horizontal stripes on the side of a house I barely knew. I rinsed the brush once more, the puddle under the spigot swirling the washed-off color into a muddy kaleidoscope.

Looking at the tie-dyed water, I smiled wryly when I thought about my camera again—the second time in two days I'd found something I wanted to snap—and imagined how I'd frame the image. It had been so long since I took a picture for the sheer beauty of what it would capture, and the thought that I wanted to do it felt as foreign to me as I'm sure the house felt with the damp paint that now marred its side.

The sun marked noon above me, and my stomach growled, pulling me from dangerous thoughts, so I threw the brush down onto a plastic bag and made some lunch.

I let an hour pass as I sat eating a sandwich and drinking a couple beers, propped up against two hay bales that smelled faintly of animals, and wishing I had chosen a spot under the trees not too far from the house. Sweat gripped my neck as I stared at those colors on the side of the house with one eye, asking it to tell me which it preferred. A distant feeling of amusement as I mulled over the paint rose within me, and I shook my head, laughing at myself and this strange idea of doing something for the pure _fun_ of it. Something unexpected. Something that didn't follow rules.

It was probably my one eye and drunk brain trying to deceive me that it looked good the way it was.

It was wrong. Who painted a house like this? But somehow, the boards looked so right. I felt energized as I stripped off my sweat-soaked shirt and spent the rest of the afternoon painting, talking to the house, explaining what I was doing to it like a child, how I was freeing it. I finished each board from left to right and front to back in the color each plank was testing. And it was strangely exhilarating.

In another way, in a new life, I was creating art.

I stepped back, stood up on those hay bales and laughed. There was no army green, no dull brown desert camouflage, no crumbling gray concrete. I'd created a mess, a giant circus tent. Who decided a house needs to be all one color? I was high, empowered with the idea that I could make something ridiculous just because it fucking made me happy. A fleeting emotion, if ever there was one.

I felt desperate to finish the house, right then and there. My heart clutched itself inside, afraid that if I stopped, I wouldn't feel the same way in the morning. I was almost frantic to hang onto this lightness, but I knew it was too late to get more paint or find a ladder in the darkening shed.

The waving of that ribbon caught my one eye, and I just stared at it as I had that morning, trying to imagine the why of it. Tried to imagine that girl in the white dress coming to tie it in the middle of the night. What was she hoping to achieve? For a moment, I considered going to that miserable house and offering to help fix it up much as I was doing to my own, especially if I was going to have to look at it. I didn't know if that girl had brothers or a father or even a husband to do that kind of work, but if she did, they were doing a shit job of holding onto what they had. I felt my eyes narrowing in the direction of the house, pissed off that she thought she could tie that ribbon on my newly alive home while she left her own to die.

* * *

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	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

We sat in the sun for most of the afternoon and watched him paint his house.

I did most of the watching, actually. The fawn didn't seem interested. It sat beside me in the grass for a while before it got bored and wandered off to eat everything in sight: the soft green leaves and pale pink flowers off of the clover. We were mostly hidden, tucked into the trees, just a stone's throw away from this strange new inhabitant. He'd probably see me if he looked in exactly the right spot, but he was too intent on his job to notice much of anything.

I noticed _everything_.

He was tall, with a shadow that stretched on forever when he stepped into the sun. He'd be even taller if he didn't slouch, but he did, just a little, like he was cowering over an ache hidden deep beneath his ribs. He ran his hands through his hair a lot as though he wasn't used to the feel of it, and his arms were already baked a dark brown, coming from sunshine, wherever that was. He swallowed a lot, nursed four beers for almost an hour, and muttered to himself under his breath all the time. He had a big black tattoo on one arm and hummed along to scratchy songs out of a transistor radio. He smiled, only once, and all to himself.

Something about it made me certain he didn't do that very often.

He really did have an eyepatch. I thought for sure I'd made it up—mistook a shadow across his face for something solid—but sure enough, there it was. Strapped to his head with a thin band that rumpled his hair, a big gaping black spot held over the place where his eye should be. I wondered how he'd lost it or if he'd even lost it at all. Wondered what his view of the world was like: if it was lopsided, tilted at an angle, or skewed forever sideways. Wondered what it looked like under there, a sagging empty hole or a twisted gash of scar tissue or totally normal.

Wondered what happened to him. Wondered when and where and why.

I wondered what color his other eye was.

He worked for most of the day which meant that he probably owned the house now. You didn't spend that kind of energy on something you might leave behind one day. A new coat of paint was like marking your territory, and he marked his with color. Not just one or two either, the way normal people paint their home: the clapboards white and then the trim something somber like grey or blue or green. Plain colors, 'cause being too different out here wasn't exactly the best thing to be. He used four. Green and yellow, blue, purple.

Wrapped a rainbow around the house like a belt.

My ribbon was still fluttering on the flagpole, stained orange from the rusted metal. It was so obvious to me that my eyes kept drifting toward it, a little white flag flapping in the breeze. Maybe he hadn't seen it. I didn't really know if I wanted him to see it, or why I had done it in the first place. Some neighbors brought pie and gossip, but I wasn't like most neighbors.

I turned their property into a graveyard and then tied up white-ribbon apologies like I wanted them to know.

The fawn nosed through an entire bush of buffalo berries before it was finally full. It tried to curl up in my lap afterward, boney hooves digging into my soft ankles. I pulled it close and folded its legs between mine, stroking its soft ears until it was breathing slowly, peaceful, its heartbeat resonating through my stomach. I was still feeding it the baby formula, still out of the china bowl. I had let it sleep in my bed last night because it cried from the floor, its chin on the mattress until I helped it up next to me. I woke to find it curled up against my stomach, ears twitching dreamily, buried right down in my blankets beside me. Blinking those little doe eyes, licking my neck with a warm tongue, and tumbling off the bed in a tangle of legs. It spent every moment of the morning underneath my feet, ears caught up in the hem of my nightdress, legs knotted up with mine.

I still hadn't changed.

The nightdress needed to be washed. It was stained and muddy, smears from when I had fallen in the forest last night, grass rubbed from my morning in the field, all those ribbons coming undone from the storm. My skin was ashy, and my hands were still crusted in dirt from my midnight digging. My hair was hanging limp, scraggly around my elbows. I was still picking things out of it, wilted flowers and soft green leaves. A twig. An acorn.

I needed a washing as badly as the dress.

I woke the fawn and crept away, daydreaming of the stream, the gentle trickle of water that marked the serpentine property line between me and this strange new neighbor. The stream ran close to my house, just a few steps through the trees, but it was set far back on the other end of his property, across an overgrown marsh. He was still painting, now shirtless and sweating and still humming along to the old-time songs from his radio. I was pretty sure he hadn't even been here long enough to explore as far as the stream and figured he wasn't likely to stumble across me there by accident.

At least not anytime soon.

We took the long way, stopping by the house so I could grab the can of soft buttery soap I bought off Sparrow, my tiny withered friend who lived across town, the one with the crystals and cats and the ability to see my aura. She called me Agaskawee, _swan girl,_ in her native tongue, and my heart always glowed purple, whatever that meant. She hawked all sorts of strange concoctions, love potions, and prayer beads, but her soap was her best seller. It was thick and creamy, all natural, nothing but soap lilies and yucca. The color of moss, it smelled like springtime, a thousand springtimes, a million of them, all boiled down into one.

My favorite spot was technically on new Neighbor's property. The banks got washed away with the floodwaters after that big storm when I was nine, water clear up to the porch, but still Mom wouldn't think of leaving. I was sure the house would lift right off its foundation like a boat and float all the way to Texas by the time the water receded, and I wore a snorkel mask to bed for a week expecting it. The swimming hole was carved out of the shoreline during that flood, a shallow pool haloed in cattails and lily pads. Fed from one end and draining from the other, it was shaded by a group of crabapple trees, most of their flowers blown clean off from the storm, the ground a pink carpet and the shoreline mottled rose. The fawn scampered by me and tripped right into the water, face first, slipping on the rocks. It came up drenched, soft baby fur plastered to scrawny ribs, raindrop eyelashes. It planted all four legs wide in the slippery rocks and shook itself, a spray of water across my knees before it looked up at me, blinking wildly.

"You're okay," I told it, and it must have agreed. It bobbed its head, ears flopping before it jumped suddenly sideways, kicking up water, landing with another splash. It wiggled its backside before it pounced again with a squeal of excitement, the first sound I'd ever heard it make other than the crying from last night.

I laughed and stepped into the water, the creek a welcome chill against the heat. I sank down into the water, up to my armpits with a heavy sigh. I scrubbed at my legs with a handful of soft sand while the fawn played nearby. The mud on my calves came off easy enough, a brown cloud floating downstream, but my feet required more attention, still coated with the sticky remains of the fawn's milk and berry meal last night. I shimmied out of the dress and took a handful of soap to it, washing it tenderly, in case it fell apart altogether. The yucca and the lilies frothed foamy white, bubbles sticking to my skin, and I rinsed the dress clean, hanging it from a nearby branch to dry. There were still ghostly stains around the bottom, but it was almost white again. I sank back down into the water and watched it sway from the tree.

So what if Mom wanted to be buried in that nightdress.

So what if she wanted anything at all—she wasn't here to voice it, and she sure wasn't hanging around the house like I expected her to. She wasn't lingering in the doorways or knocking over knickknacks, dropping pennies in strange places or appearing like a shadow in the back corners of my eyes. I figured she'd be stuck there in the house somehow. Watermarked to the walls like that stain on the carpet, but she wasn't. The house was silent and still, the hollow, see-through shell of a creature that shed it for a better version.

All of the life just crawled right out, and I didn't know if that made it worse or better.

An enormous part of me wanted to burn the entire thing to the ground. Every memory— the good, the bad, and the absolutely fucking terrible—all of it up in smoke. Every shingle, every nail, every housedress, all of it just laid to waste by a single lick of flame. Maybe I'd light it up and then leave, disappear, so the town would think I died in there too. Maybe I'd run to town, stumble into the fire station, beg for help, play the part. Let my heart break and guilt ravage my conscience as they tried to salvage what vestiges they could. Maybe I'd stand in the front yard and watch from start to finish, dusted down with ash and misery, dirty as the day I was born into this mess.

Dirty as the day I was left behind in it.

I was meant for something different, something more than this, something less painful. But here I was, finally washed clean like a kid gone too long without a bath, defying my mother and my adulthood and my stubbed-toe reality. Floundering through my life in a nightdress meant for a graveyard and a house meant for a matchstick.

* * *

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	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

I painted as much as I could, mostly the part that was chest level and down, and I felt pretty accomplished. I knew the proper way to do it was to power-wash the grime away and fix nails, sand the parts that had warped and spackle any holes that remained. I didn't do any of this, instead wanting the instant gratification of my end goal. Also, I kind of liked the idea that the grime and nail heads and warped parts and holes had made this house sturdy in its own right.

Like a glue. Like a Band-Aid.

Like a stretchy cloth bandage that held in your insides when a shard of glass from a broken window went across your stomach and through your arm. Deforming the tattoo you'd gotten when you were young and stupid, so now it was just a gash of something unrecognizable, something that died in battle.

I looked at that tattoo now, splattered into an even more grotesque shape from the paint that I'd managed to miss the house with. It was sprayed up and down my arms and smeared across my pockmarked chest, with drippings on my bare feet. I squished one foot on the other and saw it run together and figured I should wash up sooner rather than later. Before the paint dried and left the grime and the holes on me like the house.

One of the things that drew me to this house, besides the fact it hadn't been lived in for a long time, was the small creek and pond that was promised but not pictured in the information Rose gave me. The thought of washing off in that pond was more pleasing than the cold spigot, and I had visions of nature cleansing me rather than dirtying me. Maybe this place, this clean water and fresh air, would begin to rinse me of all the wrong that lived inside.

 _I was one symbolic motherfucker all of a sudden._

I grabbed my discarded shirt, figuring to use it as a rag to wipe at the paint, and followed the sound of the stream I'd been hearing while I took up watch each morning and night on that porch.

The ground got spongier as I moved away from that clearing from yesterday and closer to that sad house. I craned my neck to look over the shrubbery and saw the house barely visible. The closer I got to the water, everything turned greener and more lush, until I felt like I wasn't in fucking Kansas anymore, Dorothy, but in some oasis they promised you in the desert but never delivered. I stopped to appreciate nature and my surroundings, habits I had forgotten over the years to do.

I heard a bit of splashing and assumed the water was moving out of the pond towards wherever ponds go and felt my feet starting to get covered in the marshy water. There were some rocks I needed to cross that were slippery with moss, but hell, I'd crossed more dangerous terrain than this.

Just as I was about to hoist myself onto the big gray rock, I heard that sound again—the soft, soothing voice and the whine of an animal—and my head shot up in its direction.

There was Deer Girl, standing in the water and laughing as the fawn skittered and played on the rocks opposite my own.

Her hair was still chaotic, bits of bright green grass and flowers clinging to curls hanging halfway down her back.

Her very _naked_ back.

I looked over at the deer quickly, and it didn't seem to notice me, so I turned my eyes back to the girl, half-shamed 'cause I'd been brought up right, but ready to argue she was on my land. Fair game.

Her skin was pale and milky under the dirt she was scrubbing off, her hand reaching in and returning from the water to rub against her legs. Her hair moved then, falling over her shoulder, the ends dipping into the water and swimming left and right as she moved in a lather of creamy ivory bubbles. It was almost as if she were a siren in an ethereal garden, put there just for me, and I stood, planted with one foot on the rock as I watched her wash what looked like the same dress from yesterday. The one with the same colored ribbon that now lived on my flagpole.

I ducked down as she turned, not wanting to be caught but to continue observing her as I had yesterday. Her body stretched out of the water as she lovingly hung that dress over the branch nearby, dripping and making soft puddles as they fell against the lily pads that skimmed the top of the water underneath.

She was like a work of art, like that painting of Ophelia I'd seen in London on a rare day devoid of devastation. She moved in those lily pads and water flowers, speaking to the fawn, and I swear that deer nodded, answering her yet again.

I was struck dumb, staring at her until guilt or good old-fashioned manners started to kick in, and I knew I had to go, to let her bathe, even if it was in my pond. But then she turned her body towards me completely, still unaware of my presence, and it was like I was rooted in place. Her face was pretty, not model-stunning or overly sexy, but sweet and young. There was an air of innocence that warred with something else, something deeper, sadder, and it made her features infinitely more interesting. That tangled hair shifted to cover both breasts, and the water was up to the flare of her hips, so I saw nothing I shouldn't, but I couldn't help feeling somewhat disappointed. Her hands rinsed her arms, dipping back into the water to gather more over and over again, leaving me mesmerized.

The curve of her hip would be lovely, shot in black and white, up close, and you wouldn't know if it were a mountain or a body until you looked at it long enough. I could envision the photo her neck and the bottom of her chin would make, with a hint of a smile on her bottom lip, partially hidden by brown, silky tresses. A shoulder, her hand reaching tentatively to stroke it, would be breathtaking blown up and displayed on a gallery wall. The dip and curve where her thigh met her pelvis, a sloping valley you would want to touch and feel.

She was no _girl_.

I had the strongest urge to be under that water, her hands skimming my face as they dipped and gathered. Her fingers ghosting over my hair as I lay my head on slippery skin, thighs that were hidden from me. She just seemed so… _pure_.

And I was anything but.

* * *

I was back at it the next day, after two trips to town to haul four cans of paint from Sam's Hardware. My legs ached from peddling the rusty bike, and I realized it was going to take many trips, but honestly, I had nothing else to do, so whatever.

As I prepped my new paint, I didn't think of Deer Girl in the water. I didn't think about how beautiful she looked or how innocent. I didn't think about that sheer dress hung over the branch, teasingly removed from her. Didn't think about what her eyes would look like if they were ever to fall on mine.

I didn't think of any of those things as the sun beat down, making my sweat mix with the melange of paint drippings on my hands and arms.

There was a crappy porch chair I was using to stand on, trying to avoid the fourth slat, rotted and broken, as I reached up above the stripes I'd painted the day before. I was still happy about my choice, trying not to question it, as the old-school radio sang about feeling crazy. Crazy for feeling so lonely.

I wasn't lonely, but I thought a call to Rose wouldn't be out of the question. She had to be wondering how I was making out. We'd agreed that she'd let me have this time, time to do fuck knows, but I didn't want her to worry. She'd had enough of that with him… and now me.

The slap of the brush against the house did nothing to stop my thoughts of the past from consuming all others, and my movements grew angrier with each pass. I felt frantic to just get something done. Get something right. I took my frustration out on that brush and color, not caring that I was going about this the wrong way as I watched the paint splatter onto the freshly painted boards below. I should've started at the top, should've worked my way down so there were no dribbles. Should've, would've, could've. It didn't matter. Life was imperfect, life was bloody, and this house would wear my blood and sweat like a badge I wasn't going to regret. I'd done enough of that, she had said.

Rose had said that. Rose had forgiven me.

My hand paused, and my chest seized with guilt, thinking of the why of it all—why she needed to, why she shouldn't— and I could feel the hot tears that hadn't been shed, even through the aftermath and funeral. They were coming; they were brewing like the storm that circled the other day. I could only hope that it would be as insignificant as that had turned out to be when it finally came to the surface.

I longed to feel wetness pool under the patch that I wore to remind myself every fucking day as I looked at that flag, another reminder of why I was here. The ribbon hung limp, still tied, still uninvited, and I could feel the festering, crippling sadness edging in.

Anger was so much better than sorrow.

Jumping off the chair, I stormed over to the flagpole, and with sweaty hands, I untied that what? Welcome? Warning? It came off quickly, the satin slipping easily through its knots. When I turned, I was startled to see the fawn, her fawn, standing at the opening of the lane that nature made. Upon seeing me, it jumped and pranced away, moving towards exactly where I was going.

The disturbing house loomed closer as I trailed the deer and marched over the flat grasses in that diagonal path, and I didn't stop when I saw her in a chaotic garden. As she saw me storming nearer, she stood straight up, one eye widening, and her mouth clamping tight. I was three steps beyond her sagging gate as she was ripping off a scarf that mocked me by hanging low over one eye, revealing both as brown when they blinked and stared at me. Without the deception of her beauty in the fairy pond, my eye took her in from her bare feet to her purple, flower-laden hair, landing on that same strange dress, even more transparent from the sun beating down. My eye made one quick pass over her face, and before I knew what I was doing, her wrist was in my hand.

My paint-covered fingers tied that ribbon around her like she'd done to the pole. Tight, too tight I knew, but she didn't protest as I did it, finally dropping her hand down from my own with a satisfied push.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

He found me in the garden.

At least, it used to be a garden, back when my mother cared about things. Through the overgrown weeds and the prairie grass, you could still see the faint echoes of what had once been, the only ghost she left behind. Her neat rows of corn were now sprouting an unkempt forest from years of the cobs lying forgotten in the dirt. The blackberry bushes had grown into a mad, tangled monster. The prairie onions were bombarding the western front, and the strawberries were holding fast to the eastern borders. Flora gone rabid. Vegetation run amok.

I was sitting in the spearmint with one of Mom's old silk scarves tied around my head, knotted over my left eye.

I had been thinking about eyes a lot. About how a little ball of squishy moss with a blue-petaled cornflower blossom tucked into the center of it looked just like an eyeball. How the bubbled bumps of the blackberries looked like a brain and how the soft fronds off the ends of the thistles looked just like feathery tips of nerves. How lungs might really be full of acorns instead of bronchioles. Maybe spines were just like the delicate vines that sprawled out from underneath the strawberries, pairs of leaves sprouting like stacked vertebrae, smaller and smaller and smaller. Maybe we were really just gardens in the end, underneath our skin where no one could see.

No blood. No bones.

Just dirt and worms and sunshine.

I didn't even hear him. Half-daydreaming, half-blind, half-wondering if my blood was really just dirt, if my heart was an apple. I was an easy target.

He was right there, standing at the gate with his forehead wrinkled, clearing his throat with a rough sound that startled me. I darted to my feet, breath caught in my mouth, ripping the scarf off my face. My face flamed, embarrassed beyond belief that he'd caught me playing pretend with his reality in such a careless way. He was shirtless again, covered in a faint splatter of paint, and I was still in the nightdress. With the sun baking the back of my neck, I smashed my thighs together and crossed my arms over my chest as his one good eye traveled all the way down to my feet and all the way back up to my hair. I'd sat in the trees again for most of the day, watching him as he prettied up his house, rolling around in the strawberries, and making chain-link crowns out of violets. Snuggling with the fawn and studying his every move.

I was so curious about him—my nameless neighbor.

Half-naked and mostly angry.

He reached for me quickly, a darting movement I barely registered before he had my hand in his, and he was tying my white ribbon too tightly around my wrist.

"Don't," he exhaled, his words caught harsh and raw in his chest. "You just don't know. You have no right." His eye lifted to mine, face rigid with anger, and he pointed his finger at me. "That's my flagpole. My pond. _Mine_."

I barely heard any of it. I just nodded along, unable to speak, stuck in the exciting minutia of being so close to someone like him. His shadow. His smell. Sweat and wood and sunshine as he glared at me. The soft skin on his neck where his beard was starting to shadow his jaw and the way he swallowed before he moved toward me. The faint beginning of crow's feet at the corner of his eye and the bright, clover-colored iris behind his dark lashes. The million different colors in his hair, rust and copper and something dark like the dirt if you dug just a couple inches under the surface. The little puckered nub of scar tissue on his shoulder, next to a dot of yellow paint. The tattoo on his arm, the image warped by skin that was damaged not so long ago and barely visible beneath a fresh scar.

I fidgeted, grabbing fistfuls of my nightdress, watching as he turned away and strode three angry steps back to the gate. He paused just outside the garden, crossing his arms over his chest and squinting up at my crooked house with a frown on his face. The house didn't look much better than I did. Overgrown ivy creeping in through the windows. Balding roof, shingles scattered across the lawn. Peeling paint and sagging porch. The fawn emerged from the corn, appearing between my legs again, and we watched him in silence until he spoke again.

Turning toward me to ask me who was taking care of the house.

"No one." I looked away and shrugged. "Me."

"Who's taking care of _you_?"

I fingered the ribbon around my wrist, so tight it made my hand throb in time to my heartbeat. I shrugged again, wondering what he thought of me. How I must look in my nightgown, my wild hair, my flushed cheeks. I was only just reaching out for my twenties, and he was older than Jacob, that was for sure. Ten years between us, twelve, maybe more, but right now he looked downright ancient. A hundred years old. Weathered and beaten. It wasn't only the wrinkles or the steel-toed set of his eyebrows that made him seem so broken. It wasn't the eyepatch or the puckered scars, not the two, four, seven, _twelve_ knots that splattered across his chest like a grease burn. It wasn't the way he looked down at me with something like disdain, but more like regret, in his eyes.

It was the way that he left.

Sliding over the ground as though he couldn't let his feet completely leave the earth.

* * *

I slept restlessly, tossing covers and turning recollections like a carousel in my head.

He spun around me all night long.

I couldn't help my curiosity. It had always been there, just as much a part of me as my hair or my eyes or my fragile, fluttery heart. Just as solid and steady as the soles of my feet, as natural as the freckles that marred my face and my arms. He was too interesting to leave alone, too different not to wonder about.

In the middle of my recent disaster, he was the safest, easiest, most intriguing thing to wrap my thoughts around.

I made up stories in my dreams: the places he had been, the people he had loved, the terrible, wonderful things that had brought him to the smallest town in the plainest state, as far away from anything as you could ever get. The unspeakable circumstances that had sunk that unnamed anger so deep beneath his skin. The awful thing that had happened to his eye. I fell asleep to the sound of the wind, the feel of my mother's old rose-patterned sheets, the breath of the fawn on my neck, and the blurry, faint feeling of what his fingers could feel like against my skin.

I woke up to hammering.

A steady _thud thud thud_ as though the house was coming to life, finding its pulse. The window panes rattled, and the floorboards vibrated, thrumming up against the soles of my feet as I set them on the floor. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, wondering if the foundation was finally giving way. Maybe the whole house was sliding sideways toward the ground, about to crumple into a pile of wood and glass and remorse. My heart soared up into my throat as I leapt out of the bed, searching for the fawn. It was nowhere to be found, just a tangle of sheets and the blanket pushed off onto the floor. The thumping got louder, harder, and I skidded out onto the landing, ready to fling myself down the steps and out the door. I wanted a first row seat to the final destruction, a spot in the yard to watch every single moment of the demise of my life thus far.

My excitement deflated as I hit the top step, the sight below me ruining every pulse of hope coursing through me that the house was finally coming down.

He was kneeling in the doorframe, Neighbor, his back to me and a hammer pounding the screen door back into place. Shirtless, shoeless, the early morning sunshine filtering through his hair and creeping over his shoulders. The fawn was standing on the porch, watching him intently, its ears wagging when it saw me hovering on the stairs.

What in the hell did he think he was doing? This house was destined for a tornado, not nails. It should have been flattened, not resurrected. It wasn't worth his time. He had better things to be doing. His half-painted house was just as lopsided as his vision and his smile and his anger issues. His yard was even more overgrown than my own.

I stomped down the steps, stopping close enough that I could smell him, grass, and sweat. "What are you doing?" I asked, my throat tight and tears in my eyes.

He startled, looking back over his shoulder at me with nails between his lips and the hammer in his fist. With a shrug, he turned back to the doorframe, mumbling around the metal.

"Fixing this."

"Don't."

It came out sounding like a sob. It felt like a sob. Ripped up through me like a heatwave, and my skin went up in flames. I fisted the nightdress to keep my hands from shaking and smashed my knees together to keep from trembling head to foot. He stood, taking the nails from his mouth, the hammer hanging against his thigh as he stared down at me. I felt it all over me, his gaze lingering on my neck and my mouth and my eyes. My heart lurched, guts surging with the faint taste of what I had been dreaming about all night long. His forehead compacted, and his mouth tightened down hard and thin as his hand rose in the air between us the same moment a tear slipped out of my eye, tumbling down my cheek.

He faltered, hesitating, his fingers just inches from my face.

I jerked away, not ready for this, not now, angrily brushing the evidence of my too-big emotions off my face. I couldn't breathe. My head had gone light, and my brain had gone dark. I gulped down something sharp and bitter as I ran by him, flinging myself through the open door in search of fresh air, not entirely sure if I was running from him or myself or the still-standing house. I could feel his fingers graze my elbow, could hear my head hammering empty and loud and my feet pounding across the wood because running was always, always the safest option.

My heart was so heavy, it pulled me right through the porch.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

My morning coffee tried to do its job: to shake the hangover of sleeping pills that lost their battle to fitful, enraged horrors that played behind my eyelids each night. I hadn't slept more than four hours at a stretch in years, but these last few months, it had dwindled to two.

Despite my exhaustion, it was a great day for painting. The bright, blue sky was larger than the earth itself; there weren't any jagged, cave-filled mountains or crumbling buildings in the way. Just flatlands of tall grass in an even line against the horizon. The only things that marred my view were my weary shed and the even wearier house across the field. I narrowed my eye at it, the other aching slightly as it mimicked the movement under the patch. Absentmindedly, I rubbed at the patch lightly, willing the ghost pain away, and maybe willing the sight before me away too. I wasn't going to think about that girl over there, the odd one with the pitiful dress and ridiculous pet.

Wasn't going to think about her naked body bathing in my pond, just yesterday.

Stirring the colors to freshen them up, I readied them to continue striping my house. My only goal for today. The radio played its boogie woogie while yellow paint stained my hands as I worked on a plank to the right of the porch, coating it cheery and insane. The brushstrokes were soothing, like rubbing your elbow to lessen the pain when you hit it just right. Each stroke making the sting a fleeting memory. I continued on that plank as far as I could, reaching up above me as much as my height and the broken chair would allow, until I gave in and looked for something better to stand on. Eventually, I knew I'd need to go into town and haul a ladder back somehow, but for now, maybe I could use one of the antique end tables in that overdone front parlor.

The shed came into view as I was about to enter the house, so I turned that way to see if there was something sturdy to put my weight on. The doors opened with bits of sawdust and debris flying through the air as I rooted around. Way in the back corner, behind a fancy car grill and some sort of rusted farm machine, was a ladder. The old kind, made of wood with round steps that fit in holes. One or two of the rungs appeared cracked, but I knew that was an easy fix. I hauled it out and stood it up, where it loomed a good two feet above my six foot frame.

A bit bothered by having to take a detour from house painting, I gathered the tools and looked for spare bits of wood, undamaged by termites, that I could use to shore up the broken steps. Driving nails into wood felt almost as good as painting until my thoughts ran to that decrepit house across the field and all the cracks and decay that surrounded it. You could tell it was a beautiful house once, majestic even, but whoever owned it didn't care about it, so I decided I didn't have to either.

It wasn't my problem.

Testing my new rungs, I jumped up and down on the wood a few times, smiling when it held my weight comfortably. A sweet satisfaction that I had fixed something broken, even if it was a bit guilty too, accompanied me back to the side of the house where I propped the ladder up and gathered my can and brush to continue.

From this new height, though, I could see that depressing house even better. I could see that the porch looked very ill at ease from the rest of the house, sagging and much more lopsided than it appeared up close, threatening to fall off and crawl away in protest of having to support that structure any longer.

Not my concern if she wanted to live in a dying thing.

Yellow switched to blue, and I stepped on the very top rung, the ladder shaking a bit but holding steady. Gripping the top to lean as far as possible, I felt a slice to my finger. My body wobbled, and I instinctively pulled my hand close to me. Fucking splinter. I made a mental note to get a rag to throw over the tips of the ladder the next time I came down.

Pausing from work to suck on the sting, I looked at the house across the way again and wondered just how many splinters she had endured there. How many were in those bare feet she paraded around on? How many pierced her thin, frail clothing if she sat on that porch? My brow furrowed, making my bad eye ache again, as I had a fleeting thought about finding some sandpaper and smoothing her steps at least.

But no, I decided, her bare feet also weren't my problem. I took my shirt off and gripped the top of the ladder with it as I reached far out with my brush. Up and down, left and right, the bite of the splinter with each stroke making me think about that fucking porch more than I wanted to. Glancing again, I saw the house was still sleepy, no curtains fluttering in open windows or stupid deer walking around. Closing my eyes, I shook my head and cursed loud, jumping down those rungs two at a time before I could change my mind.

Grabbing the tool chest, I searched and found a rough bit of paper and a scrap wood block to wrap it around.

I cursed the whole time I shuffled across the hay, as I called myself stupid and wondered just what the fuck I was doing getting involved with any other human being right now, especially this one. This solitary, fawn-like girl who only had herself. Hopefully I'd accomplish my sanding without her even knowing I'd been there, ending my obsession with her goddamned splintered flesh.

Walking past the only part of the house I'd been near, that garden with the vines and trellises, my eyes widened when I saw the actual condition of the porch up close. There weren't just rough steps to sand; there were steps with huge holes in them and some steps missing entirely. I looked up at the big house, its once-white stature now gray from peeling paint and hard times, and I wondered just what the fuck was this young girl doing out here all by herself, and who left her here to fare on her own? Something she obviously couldn't do.

Not my problem, I repeated again but I set that tool chest down on the ground gently, so not to make its rusted sides collapse, and picked up the hammer and some old-fashioned iron nails.

I hammered back into place some of the fair condition steps that had gone askew, but some were just unable to be saved. With the end of the hammer, I pulled the rusty nails out of those and made a mental note to grab some wood and try to replace them and the ones gone missing altogether. Or maybe I'd just drop off the wood and let her fix them herself.

Absolutely planning on leaving, my eye caught the broken screen door, hanging on one hinge, and I sighed like someone asked me to stay after church. Stepping over the missing boards, I touched the door, and the protesting squeal of the spring as it fell open sounded like a complaint.

The main kitchen door inside was ajar, and before I could shut it, the deer nosed its way out onto the porch, its ears twitching and big eyes staring at me.

"Shoo, go away." I waved my hammer at it, but it didn't budge. Just stared and blinked. I hammered a nail into the doorframe, thinking that would scare it off, but it just kept watching me work. I ignored it and grabbed three more nails, sticking two between my lips and pounded in another to make the dirty white door with the once-fancy filigree stand straight.

"What are you doing?" I heard from inside the house and looked up the staircase where the yelling was coming from. Turning back to the door, I ignored her while her angry footsteps sounded as I focused back on my hammering. I could feel her standing in that doorway behind me, and my eye glanced back on instinct. She was a furious little thing as I looked her over, hands on hips and that see-through white dress still on her body from yesterday. My face felt hot as I turned away from the silhouette of her and continued pounding nails into the frame.

"Fixing this," I muttered around the nails.

"Don't," she stammered, a bit shaky and less determined than she sounded a moment ago.

She looked as if she were about to cry and fisted that thin excuse for a dress, her hands trembling from some emotion I couldn't place. As I looked her over, her lips pressed thin, and her throat rippled as though she was having trouble swallowing. Her eyes, shaped big and brown like the fawn's, were filling with almost-tears.

Was she upset I was helping her? Was she nervous because she thought I'd demand money she probably didn't have? Or was she distressed because she was shamed by the condition of this place?

A lone tear threatened to fall, and much as I'd done with Rose those first few weeks, I looked to rid her of it, my hand rising to push that tear away and out of my sight. The deer stayed between us, looking curious, until it jumped away when she moved. She stomped angrily, directly to where I'd been working on those steps.

"Hold up!" I barked, and I wrapped my hand around her elbow to stop her from walking on the scattered nails and missing boards. Her step faltered, and her body dropped, the porch eating her up like it was hungry to destroy itself.

Her cry of pain sent slivers of metal through me, shrapnel and debris flying through the air and landing in fleshy bits of people behind my damaged eye. My stomach lurched; my lungs closed. I kept my hold on her arm, the tightening of my fist around her pale flesh making her try to pull away from me until I came back from where I'd gone, and I realized I was hurting her.

"I'm sorry." My hand loosened the vice grip holding her, and I apologetically cradled the spot I'd shown my darkness to as I kneeled. Dropping the hammer, my other hand gently eased its way down her leg, wanting to pull it free without inflicting more damage. I could see the blood dripping down her leg through the splintered wood, and my head spun. Through shallow breaths, I told her to perch on the edge of the crater, and remarkably, she let me ease her down so she was sitting on the dead porch, one leg bent into the rotted wood and one stretched out in front of her, where the deer decided it wanted to see what a foot smelled like.

I looked up sharply when she sobbed and flicked the fawn away from her, an ugly grimace curving the cheeks of her face. The sounds she made were of a worse agony than what some torn bit of skin would cause. My curious look made her stop immediately, her teeth sucking in both lips to keep her sounds inside. Her eyes were wide, exploring my own, darting back and forth from the one she could see and the one hidden behind the black patch, my grotesque reminder.

Looking down, hiding from her, I surveyed the damage. My stomach dropped at the blood again, but on further inspection, there wasn't flesh hanging off or bone jutting out at a savage angle. My fingers pressed into her calf while I slowly slid out her leg, careful not to scrape it against the splintered boards that remained. I could feel her pulse pumping through her skin, the veins carrying her blood to the injured site. It made her skin warm, too warm, and I had the strangest urge to run my hands up farther, to touch the skin just under the hem of her dress to see if she was warm everywhere.

"Just a cut," I said to her leg, easing it out straight to lie next to the other one. The deer then sniffed that foot too. "What kind of first aid do you have in the house? Where is it?" The thought of entering this house made me picture dancing around rotting floorboards and steps just to get to the medicine cabinet.

She looked resigned then, and she stared up at the porch roof instead of at me. "There's an emergency kit in the hall closet. Next to the bathroom, top of the front stairs," she said quietly, almost like she didn't want to admit it. Like she didn't want me in there as much as I didn't want to go. One look at her leg told me I couldn't just leave her to mend herself, even though I wanted to.

Making sure she was comfortable, I cautiously stepped on the boards as I made my way into her house.

The first thing that hit me was the smell. I expected musty house, rotting wood, mildew maybe. Instead, the smell of fresh strawberries hit me, like a newly baked pie. The kitchen was almost identical in size to my own, but it was filled with hanging pots and pans suspended from the tin ceiling. It was homey, cozy, until I noticed the ivy growing in through the windows and crawling over the cabinets. The wallpaper was peeling in some spots, a pattern that might've been cheery once, but was now just a gloomy, repeating landscape of barns. The drip, drip of the faucet was the only sound that greeted me.

I cut through the kitchen to get to the other side of the dual staircase that lived in the middle of the house, just like mine. Glancing around quickly, I noticed the furniture in the front room was old but unmistakingly dramatic, like what a parlor should have in it. Flowered chaise lounges and silk screens, fringed pillows and tiny silver boxes cluttering the tabletops. It was fussy, grandmotherly, and I wondered who lived here with her before she became roommates with a wild animal.

I grabbed the banister, but a stain on the floor in front of the staircase stopped me from going up. The rug there was mottled brown, the edges of the bruise spread out like something had slowly poured over it. I knew if I bent down to touch it, the fibers in the rug would be stiffer there than the well-worn parts surrounding it. It didn't look like a good stain, like a stain you got from throwing a really great party. This stain was as wretched as the house it lived in.

Skirting around it, the stairs creaked and groaned with each pass of my body weight as I climbed up, wanting to get my job over with quickly. The bathroom lay directly in front of me, and I opened the door next to it, finding a typical linen closet, filled with towels, quilts, pillows, and things that had probably been here since the house was built.

The first aid kit was on the second shelf, a scratched tin box with the familiar red cross placed on the front. I opened it to see if it contained what I needed, and although the packaging looked dated, the bandages were all still sealed. It would have to do. Pulling it all the way out, a metal picture frame fell and landed face up at my feet, revealing a picture of a woman holding a baby and a young girl. The girl was smiling even though her face seemed sad. It was a normal picture, looked to be taken with a typical 1990's disposable camera—rectangular, glossy—one everybody has some incarnation of. But when I picked it up to put it back, I realized that dress I'd become so familiar with was on the lady, fresh and new with ribbons of bright pink. The lady wearing the dress wasn't the girl I knew lived here, but the resemblance was unmistakable. I gently put it back where I'd found it, knowing how much some pictures need to be hidden.

Moving quickly down the stairs and hopping over the stain at the bottom, I reached the kitchen door and saw the fawn nestled in Deer Girl's lap, looking at her leg like it wanted to help. "Do you have any iodine? Bacitracin? Rubbing alcohol?"

"I don't think so." She wrinkled her nose. "Oh! There's a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard next to the stove."

Grabbing the whiskey, I made my way to her and kneeled on the boards. "This is going to sting." I glanced at her before pouring the brown liquid across her skin. She sucked her lips in again and groaned, watching as I washed the blood away, wiping it with a piece of gauze. "You okay?"

She nodded and let out a breath. "Yeah. Do I need stitches?"

"Not sure... it's not deep. But you might want to get a tetanus shot if you hit a rusty nail on your way down." She remained silent as I taped fresh cotton over the wound, making sure my fingers pressed carefully against the angry red flesh surrounding the cut. Her skin was sticky, the drying whiskey making light brown streaks against her pale skin. "Do you have a car?" I asked as I looked around the property, not seeing a garage.

"Yes, but Jasper always drives me. I can wait for him."

So she _did_ have someone. Someone to take care of her? Of this house? Sure didn't look like it. Whoever this Jasper was, he was doing a piss-poor job of making sure this girl was okay. I was angry then, angry that someone could let a girl like her rot away in a house that was literally falling apart around her. Snapping the first-aid kit closed with more force than necessary, I left it on the porch next to her and snaked my arm around her waist, pulling her up slightly.

"What are you doing?"

"Someone has to drive you to town."

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

Dr. Clearwater had an entire foot in the grave.

He was the closest thing to a doctor for almost a hundred miles—the hospital in Topeka basically inaccessible in a decent amount of time. The town had been waiting for him to kick the bucket for years now, leaving us without a person to bring our broken bones and busted hearts to for mending. Stitches, pills, and a healthy dose of "That was stupid; don't ever do it again." They took bets on his actual age, guesses that ranged anywhere from 80 to 180. Most people thought he was a miracle, alive despite all the obvious evidence that someone his age should be bedridden or dead. Others thought he was magic, a medicine man with the blood of the eternal bubbling through his veins, destined to live forever and ever, amen.

I was pretty sure that he drank enough gin to have fully pickled himself from the inside out.

The office still smelled the same as it always had. Antiseptic and peppermints. Baking soda and mothballs. Juniper or gin, depending if you were a bad enough kid to snoop through cabinets while the doctor took your mom down the hallway for a shot to help her settle her nerves. I had spent a lot of time here in my early teens, waiting for Mom to cry out all her problems in the back rooms. It was almost comforting really—the fact that nothing had changed. The sagging couch in the waiting room, the magazines from twenty years ago piled on tables, and the way the air conditioner still squeaked. The scratchy carpet and the wood-paneled walls seemed destined to remain the same for as long as the good doctor gave the town something to test their gambling skills on.

There was a boy slumped across the room from me, clutching a bloody hand to his chest, pale as the first snow of winter. He was ushered into the back room by a flustered Mrs. Cope, who had been with Dr. Clearwater for as long as anyone could remember. She twittered around the boy like an agitated bird, her permed hair vibrating, helping him into the examining room, leaving me momentarily alone.

My leg was throbbing but not as badly as it had been before. I wondered how much of the pain was actually from the residual sting of the alcohol rather than the injury itself. It didn't look so bad once the blood had been wiped away, but the burn of the whiskey was enough to make my head spin and my teeth try to bite off my lip. If I had been alone when it happened, I would have cried. I would have maybe sat there with the porch eating my leg for a long while before working up the courage to pull myself free. I would have probably dragged myself up the stairs and into bed, letting my leg rot off from whatever horrible bacteria the wood pushed beneath my broken skin.

I wasn't sure if I didn't cry because he was there or because I was too numb to feel anything anymore.

I was still half-amazed that he had gotten the truck started. He spent a solid twenty minutes beneath the hood, fiddling with wires and valves, scraping crusty white corrosion from the battery. The ancient thing had sat slouching in the weeds for so long, I was sure it was a lost cause. It was faded almost pink in the sunshine, the red paint gone soft and pale. The tires looked brittle, and the seat felt hard, and it belched like a drunk when it finally spluttered to life. We sat in it for a long while, silent, with Neighbor gripping the steering wheel hard enough to turn his knuckles white, his voice muttering under his breath like he was talking himself into doing something wrong. It took him five minutes to unwrap his death grip from the wheel and push the truck into gear. We rumbled to town—the truck sounding like it had a chainsaw stuck in the transmission—backfiring every time it tried to crawl out of a standstill. Neighbor cursed under his breath and ground the gears a lot, but he somehow managed to pull up in front of the doctor's office, stomping hard and fast on the rusty brakes.

"I'll be here when you're done." He turned toward me, a swatch of sunlight through the windshield burnishing his hair coppery-gold. His face looked gray around the edges, as though he wanted to run around the corner to empty his stomach onto his shoes. He was pebbled with sweat around his hairline and seemed to be holding back a full-body shake.

The way his mouth had warped when he saw the blood running down my leg…

If I wasn't certain this person had ghosts before, I was positive of it now.

"You're not coming in?"

He shook his head, glancing down the street. "Hardware store is right down there. Need some things for my place. And yours." He looked at me again, and I couldn't decide where to focus. His eye, looking tired and sad and drawn, or the eyepatch, with his scar-broken eyebrow pushed down hard over the top of it. His forehead wrinkled with concern or worry or stress. His lips pressed tight and thin against his teeth. His hands still clamped down hard around the steering wheel.

I looked away.

"Be sure to get a tetanus shot," he reminded me.

"I hate needles," I grumbled, glaring at the nondescript building in front of me. It looked as though the storm had broken a window—the glass taped back together and the faded sign hanging askew.

"Everyone does."

He grabbed the fawn by the scruff when I hopped gingerly out of the truck, catching it before it could follow me. The animal had refused to be left behind, scampering down the porch steps and running circles around the truck until it finally started. When Neighbor opened the cab door for me, the fawn had leapt up on the seat.

"That thing can't come," he'd grumbled, reaching for the fawn.

"It's okay. She'll behave," I promised. He shook his head and muttered some more but left the fawn, helping me into the truck. I curled up on the seat, the fawn snuggling in close, my leg on fire and my skin burning hot where he touched me, and I spent the entire drive trying hard not to stare at the way his muscles roped his forearm when he pushed against the gear shift. Trying not to study the way his jaw seemed to tense in time with his thoughts. Trying not to let the flame that was starting to splutter to life somewhere deep in my stomach grow strong enough to glow out from underneath my skin. He was too mysterious, too handsome, too scarred and lonely for me to douse the flame entirely.

Moments like that—he felt like the only flame I had left.

Mrs. Cope resumed her seat behind the desk, breaking me out of my daydream, shuffling papers as she shook her head. "That poor boy," she said. "His hand doesn't look salvageable."

My stomach rolled. "What happened?"

"Tractor," she answered bluntly, leaving the rest up to my wild imagination.

I had barely gotten my stomach under control by the time I was granted access to the back rooms. I sat on the examining table with my leg out in front of me while Dr. Clearwater poked and prodded all around the gash carved into my skin from my traitorous porch. He mumbled to himself; my hiss of pain when he hit a particularly tender spot going completely unnoticed. I tried to gulp down my nausea, studying his wiry hair, his giant, white mustache, the wrinkles in his dark brown skin. He was wearing a tweed jacket the color of wet dirt, a cloth handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket, and he smelled of tobacco, which was an odd thing for a doctor to smell like.

"No stitches, I think. We'll just glue you back together." He sounded as though I was a craft project, and he had a new glue gun.

"I probably need a tetanus shot?" I wasn't even sure what that was, only mentioning it because Neighbor had suggested, but the doctor nodded in agreement.

"Yes, quite. Your porch collapsed?" He was rummaging in a cabinet, speaking to me over his shoulder, which meant he didn't see me redden around the edges. "How've you been out there, girlie? Everyone is worried about you."

Sure they were. Worried that I was sliding off the deep end like Mom had, probably. Worried that I was going to show up with a plastic baby doll under my arm at the grocery store. This town survived on gossip, and I certainly gave them more than enough to wonder over.

Mom had given them even more.

"I'm fine," I muttered.

Clearwater stopped what he was doing, turning to look at me with an extra wrinkle between his eyes, and his mouth gone sideways. "You sure don't sound that way."

"How am I supposed to sound? After…" I waved my hand in the air because we really didn't need to hash out all the gritty details here. He knew. Knew better than me, probably, what she'd been dealing with, and a small bit of me hated him for that. For the forced honesty his presence demanded. There was no lying here.

He shook his head with a sigh and leaned back on his desk, gripping the edge and staring at me like I was a math problem. "Bella, your mama… she knew she was slipping. All those years ago, she knew she was losing herself, and I knew it too. We tried, Bella. We tried everything, but I'm no miracle worker, and there just wasn't enough money. Maybe if she'd gone to Topeka..."

"Yeah, right. She would have never," I snapped, tears threatening and my voice wobbling.

"You're probably right, she was better left alone most days. Those fancy head doctors would have scared her off. But I… I couldn't give her what she needed. I couldn't find a way to make her head right again." He shook his head, staring down at his shoes with a faraway look in his eyes. "I'll always regret it."

"Regret her, you mean?"

"No," he said firmly, eyes hard on me again. "Your mama was sweet and soft and kind when she wasn't so lost."

I huffed, something rotten bubbling up in my throat—memories of her early years clouded by the big black maelstrom of the end. "She was always lost."

"Not always. But you were so young when it started. She loved you, Bella. She loved you more than anything, and I think she might have let go a lot sooner if it wasn't for you. You gave her something to hold on to."

I looked away, shaking my head because I couldn't even come up with anything to say to that. It was probably true. He was probably right. But it sure made the whole shitty situation feel even shittier than before.

"Mrs. Whitlock said she's been sending Jasper out to check up on you. He's a good boy, that one." Clearwater finally got around to gluing my leg back together. I was a little annoyed by it, wondering if I should have just stayed home and done it myself.

I had super glue.

"He comes. Can't say he wants to, though."

"She's in bad shape, that Alice. Arthritis like I've never seen before, getting worse. It's a good thing she has that boy, with all those kids out there."

Alice Whitlock had moved slowly since before I could even remember. A pause to her steps and a hesitancy in her grip. It was as though she was asking herself with every movement if she was capable of it, wondering if her feet would fail or her hands would clamp up. She ended up seated at the front window for most of her days, watching over her brood like a lame hen watches her chicks, lots of calling out of names and swats to the backside if they ventured too close. Jasper had taken over the duties abandoned by his father, pulling that farm up from the bootstraps, managing six large fields, a herd of fair-grade cattle, and his wild younger siblings all while carting his Mom around from room to room.

I hunched over a momentary stab of guilt to the guts, watching intently as the doctor glued me up. I should have gone to see Alice long before now. She had been Mom's closest friend for years, as good as a second mother to me for most of my existence, but the thought of leaving my house to be comforted in the soft, squashy breasts of someone else's mother was almost too much to bear.

"Heard you got a new neighbor out your way." Dr. Clearwater was flicking at a needle, forcing bubbles out of the cylinder. I scowled at him. The mouths that were betting on his own age and death had surely spun the news of the new inhabitant right through his front doors as efficiently as an over-spun windmill.

"Yes," I said firmly. "He drove me here."

"Town is all aflutter... got everyone talking," the doctor mused, approaching me with the needle and a look of determination on his face. I didn't need a dad to tell me that he was about to give me a warning that I didn't want. That eyepatch and those scars had probably spawned enough rumors to drown out my Mom entirely.

"All they do is talk," I grumbled.

"Just think you should be careful, girlie." He shrugged. "Don't go trusting someone until you know they're worth it."

"He's worth it. He's fixing my porch."

I squished my eyes shut as he grabbed my arm and flinched when the needle pricked, making him jab me harder than he needed to. He patted my knee consolingly when he was done.

"Keep it clean; don't let it get infected. The glue will fall off in a week or so. And honey, if you need anything… you know I'm always here. We all are."

"I know when to ask for help."

"Sure you do. Just don't wait too long."

I fled the good doctor's well-meaning concern, thrusting some crumpled cash at Mrs. Cope before limping out of the office, squinting in the bright sunshine. My leg felt too hot, and my head felt too full, and my stomach was growling around a solid lump of resentment. I wanted to get out of town, wanted to get back to my house and out from under the fish-eye lens of all the faces pressed to the windows, watching the spectacle on Fourth Street that was Bella Swan. It was easier when Mom was alive, when the weather and the new highway out past Topeka and the never-ending drought were the biggest topics of conversation. It was easier when Old Man Ashby was the crazy one with the cats and the rabbits and the bad case of Alzheimer's. It was easier when the school had burned down, and the post office fired Mrs. Stratton with little fanfare and no pension after forty-five years of service. But now that the rains had come, the highwaymen had moved on, Ashby was dead, and the school was rebuilt. Mrs. Stratton had opened a little flower shop next door to the post office out of spite.

I was the only one left standing in the face of the town's boredom.

Me... and Neighbor.

The truck was still parked at the curb, the fawn hanging its head out of the window with her tongue drooping, and her ear waggling at me like an eager dog. Neighbor was leaning against the engine, his arms crossed over his chest, feet crossed at the ankles. He pushed off of the engine as I approached.

"Get that shot?"

I nodded glumly.

"You don't look so hot."

I nodded again.

I didn't feel so hot either.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

She limped out of the truck, and the gentleman in me wanted to swing around the rusty bucket of metal to help.

The guy that resented he was here in this pitiful excuse for a car against his better judgement won and stayed put.

Once I'd determined more medical help than I could offer was needed, I couldn't let her stumble into town herself. I didn't know who that Jasper guy was she mentioned, but he didn't seem like the most reliable person anyway. So even though I had no desire to get further involved with this unwanted neighbor of mine, and I had specific instructions not to operate a car until my sight returned, I did what I had to do.

I did the right thing for once.

Honestly, though, the "right thing" motive wasn't the whole truth. If I had just left well enough alone as I knew I should've and stayed on my side of the field, she'd have never stormed across the rotting porch to yell at me and fall clear through in the first place. Deep down, I needed to make sure she was okay. It was sort of my fault she fell, and I couldn't watch another person suffer as I stood by silently.

The fawn and I watched her go, pulling open the green door to what she said was the only doctor's office in a hundred mile radius, the hospital even farther away. The wood screeched as it was forced from the jam across the concrete step—the marks there dark and arched in a pattern that'd been repeated for what was probably centuries.

I should've made her change her dress. Shaking my head, I thought about her smooth leg in my rough hand as I tended to her. Pictured the way the light would hit it under a desert sun. Soft and pale, just a hint of gooseflesh puckering her skin. "She'll be okay," I said to the animal, feeling its brown fur under my hand as I stroked it, at first to get it to calm down, and then because it was sort of nice. Soft and downy, I felt it soothing me: all the nerves from driving when I knew I shouldn't, and the fear this tin can would blow up. Something else that would be my fault if she died from a car wreck, my handicapped driving the cause, or just from the poor mechanics of the truck alone.

The deer looked back at my words, twitching an ear in either disagreement or thanks. It folded its legs beneath it and sat, propping its head out the open window to stare at the building she entered. I reached over and locked the door for good measure, in case its foot caught the handle or something. All I needed was to be indebted to this girl because I let go of what seemed to be her best friend.

The hardware store was only two blocks away, so I got out, exercising hands that were still a bit achy from the death grip I'd had on the wheel. The truck was tough enough to drive as it was, with no power steering, but not being able to see the road too well and having passengers I was responsible for didn't help at all.

The small street, what someone visiting who didn't have to stay too long might call "quaint," was busy since it was a Saturday. A woman carrying grocery bags, while trying to hold onto an excited toddler, gave me a funny look as I walked past Mr. Thompson's Market—her stare not something I was used to just yet but had gotten enough of during my few trips into town. The look that said "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" that morphed into "What happened to you?" when they saw the eye patch and scarring on the parts of me they could see. I was tempted to whip off my shirt and really show her the extent of my injured flesh.

Instead, I walked around the corner to the back entrance of the hardware store, my mood today not one I wanted to chance on scaring town folk. I wouldn't be able to control the bite of my tongue which was controlled by scars and bruises. The signaling bells in back mirrored the ones in front, and as I stepped over the threshold, the now-familiar scent of sawdust, turpentine, and smoke greeted me along with the friendly hello of the owner.

"Edward! Back for more paint already?" The man with skin too weathered to match his barely middle-aged face smiled at me, the pipe that was also too old for him clenched in his wide smile.

I smiled easily. "Hey, Sam." He instantly put me at ease, shaking off the nervous energy I'd had bottled up in me since this morning. There was something about him that I trusted. Maybe it was just the conversation about paint, instead of my eye, that made me lose the hackles on my back, but deep down, I knew it was because he kind of reminded me of Emmett. The way his one cheek dimpled, eyes dark as midnight but bright nonetheless. But mostly I think it was just his gentle way—the sort of person that just made you feel like he really was happy to know you. Emmett had that in spades.

I hadn't planned on getting more paint yet, but the idea of having the back of the truck to haul cans was more appealing than juggling them on the bike. "Yeah, I'll take another can of each color, and a can of white for trim, I guess."

Sam laughed and let out a plume of sweet-smelling smoke. "That's gonna be some house when you're done. Can't wait to see it." He smiled and set about getting the paint ready. He hadn't blinked when I'd made the first order, asking me if I was sure I didn't mean _interior_ paint, and he looked interested when my answer of what I planned on doing was to the outside of my house. I'm not sure why I confessed it to him, a man I didn't know, but I guess that, too, was the Emmett thing.

Strolling through the surprisingly well-stocked aisles, I fingered a few things I wasn't familiar with, my interest in home improvement growing. I made a mental checklist to ask Sam for the parts I'd need for Deer Girl's porch when he was done with my paint. Getting nearer the open door of the entrance, I heard the voices of two men, something that wouldn't have made me stop dead in my tracks if it hadn't been for the mention of a girl in a weird, white dress.

"...doctor for? I hope that girl's not following her crazy mom's footsteps, dressed like that."

"At least she ain't carrying a doll like it's a real thing."

"Maybe that Whitlock kid knocked her up."

"That wasn't him driving her ma's old jalopy. Maybe she got herself a beau."

"Naw, no one in their right mind would take on that pitiful girl. More than likely she's rentin' rooms, but you couldn't pay me to stay in that ol' house. What with the spooks and the ghosts. No, sir."

"There ain't no such things as ghosts, Lenny."

"'haps not, but you don't need ghosts to scare you away from that one. Poor thing... ain't no telling what she's doing in there all by her lonesome. If I hadn't seen them take her dead mother's body out with my own eyes, I'd bet she was still in there."

I felt my face flame red, my eye pulsing along with the vein in my forehead that was surging with anger and boiling blood for the unkind words I didn't know _not_ to be true but hated anyway.

"Don't listen to them," the smoke-laced voice said right behind me. "Two geezers with nothin' better to do."

After another scowl towards them that went unseen, I followed Sam to the register where my paint cans sat. "Were they talking about—"

"Bella. Out at the Swan house. Pretty young thing—sweet, too. Have you met her yet? She's your closest neighbor."

My first instinct was to deny, say no, and walk out without the tools to fix her porch, but Sam's compliments stayed in my ears. "Yeah, she, uh, I just drove her to the doctor. Fell through the porch and gashed her leg. Besides the paint, I need some stuff to patch it up."

He looked at me a moment, a mix of thoughts playing out on his face. "That's mighty kind of you. She okay?"

"I told her to get a tetanus shot. Don't think she needs stitches." I shrugged. "What they said..." My head inclined towards the two assholes playing checkers outside.

Sam sighed and placed both hands on the counter, his pipe idly going out in the glass ashtray on the wood counter. "Story as sad as that house, but that's all it is... small-town nosiness. She's lucky to have you nearby. That girl deserves someone nice in her life."

"I'm just fixing her porch, and that's it."

Sam smiled slightly, a quick nod to his head. "Okay." Moving around the counter, he led the way to the right section of the store as I told him what needed to be done at what apparently was the "Swan House". He loaded the counter with nails, caulk, wood putty, and a few other things I thought I might need in case something else were to happen, and rung me up. Bella's supplies totaled much less than they should, and at my questioning look as I signed the receipt, he just shrugged and called it a neighborhood discount.

Arms loaded with bags and some spare wood tucked under my armpit, I went out the front and didn't hesitate to let my thigh bump right into that chess board, sending the pieces scattering across the sidewalk.

I replayed their conversation and the strange part about a baby doll. The more-wrinkled bastard of the two had said her ma carried one around like it was real. My thoughts went to the picture I'd looked at not an hour ago, and my mind couldn't decide if it had seen a baby or a doll nestled in the woman's arms.

Half-expecting the deer to be gone when I rounded the corner towards the truck, I breathed a sigh of relief that it was still there, nose out, waiting on its owner. After loading the bed with my supplies, I walked to the side where the animal sat and scratched its head a few times. "She'd better give you a name if you plan on staying." The deer just looked at me and twitched its ear, which either meant it agreed or had plans to move on. I was guessing the first.

Fifteen minutes later, we both looked up when the sound of the door scraped the concrete and Deer Girl came out, bandage on her leg and Band-Aid on her arm. Despite the obvious, I asked if she'd done what I said, and she confirmed that she had gotten the shot.

She looked sort of peaked but said nothing when I told her so, just silence, so I let it go. I said a silent prayer that the ancient thing would start a second time. Rumbling to life with a spit and a cough, we exchanged a small smile and headed our way out of town and back to our solitary existence.

She pet the deer and held one hand out the window, letting the wind catch it as I drove, and I wanted to ask her about what the men had said. About baby dolls and dead mothers, but it wasn't any of my business, and Lord knew I didn't want her rooting around in mine. I did think about that stain though, the one with the invisible barrier that wouldn't let you walk over it, and thought perhaps she and I had a little more in common than I'd first believed.

Parked back in the overgrown grass of what once was a driveway, the silence around us was deafening when I cut the engine. She was looking at the house, an expression on her face I couldn't quite decipher fully but looked a hell of a lot like resentment. I guess I'd be looking that way too if my house decided to bite me.

"You need help?" I nodded towards her leg, hoping she didn't.

"Nope." She climbed out, and the deer followed, so I went around the back to unload all the supplies. The hatch didn't function, so I climbed up on the fender and into the bed to fetch all that had slid to the front. When she asked, it was my turn to deny help, so she stood watching until I was finished.

"How much do I owe you for that?" She was pointing at the tools for her porch I'd laid on the ground. She looked anxious, and I wondered if she had any money.

Her lip was being chewed, worried, by straight, white teeth. I thought of the deep discount Sam gave me and responded she owed me nothing.

As we stood there, I had the strangest urge to pull that lip free.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

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 **HB &PB**


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

Jasper came by the next morning with a pie from his mom and a healthy dose of farm-boy judgement. Overalls and ratty hair, smelling like grass and sunshine and buffalo berries. The pie was still hot, and he was still as full of it as ever.

"You still got that thing?" he asked, setting the pie down and frowning at the fawn. The deer frowned right back at him, ears twitching restlessly as she backed up to her customary spot between my feet. I raised an eyebrow and my chin, trying to look a few inches taller and stronger and braver than I actually was.

"Where else is it gonna go? I'm feeding it, at least."

"It should be with its mom."

"It doesn't have one," I snapped, but I didn't finish. I didn't say it all because I didn't need to. We both knew. Putting it into words was just a formality.

The fawn didn't have a mom, and neither did I.

"You still ain't dressing decent, either." Jasper's eyes dropped to the bandage on my leg, the hem of the nightdress. I knew he was here because of my trip to town yesterday. Sure he'd heard it from more than several people that Bella Swan was driven to town in that truck that should have died decades ago by a new guy that no one knew, and she probably had to have her leg cut off. Just as he opened his mouth to ask, the back door slammed. Neighbor was standing there in the entryway, silent and stoic as ever, in a grey t-shirt and a worn pair of jeans and a ratty pair of Converse. Paint-splattered and eye-patched, hair rumpled and jaw gone scratchy overnight.

Staring right at me.

He looked tired, and I couldn't help but wonder if he slept at all last night—because I sure hadn't.

"Your mom didn't teach you manners?" Jasper scowled in his direction, posted up in between us like a stop sign. "You're supposed to knock on a lady's door, not just barge in."

Neighbor just shrugged, his face slack, but it seemed like he wanted to glare right back. "She knew I was coming."

"That so?" He arched a presumptuous eyebrow at me.

"Someone's gotta check on her."

" _I_ am," Jasper muttered. "She's just fine."

"Doesn't look fine to me." Neighbor's eye trailed all over the room: the peeling wallpaper and the splintered floors. The grunting refrigerator. The leaky faucet and the ivy sneaking leafy fingers in through the windows. The fawn between my knees and the grey hem of my nightdress. His gaze crawled up my arms, my neck, my face—slow and soft and deliciously hot—I flamed at the cheeks, went dry in the mouth.

"Who are you?" Jasper asked, straight to the point. Neighbor met my eyes over Jasper's shoulder, and we were going off to war together behind his gaze, all death-defying torment with a helping of fear and a hint of anger.

"Edward." Neighbor extended a hand in Jasper's direction, steady between them. All the air in my lungs solidified waiting for him to respond. It took him _way_ too long. His own mom would have cuffed him upside the head for how long it took him to respond to the gesture. I gulped and stood rooted to the linoleum, my heart churning and my head full of echoes. This new word flinging itself around my skull like a moth in a suddenly bright room.

 _Edward Edward Edward Edward._

"Jasper... Whitlock." Jasper finally spoke, returning the handshake with a little more force than necessary, obviously thinking that his hometown name would strike a nerve in this new neighbor. "Listen here, Stranger. She's too young for you." Jasper pointed at me. "This whole town is watching. _I'm_ watching. And you—" He turned back to me, shaking his head. "You gotta get rid of that damn thing." With one last glare in my direction, he pushed by us both and stalked out the door.

I couldn't look at him, but I knew he was staring at me.

 _Edward_.

"Is that your boy?" He hooked his thumb over his shoulder in Jasper's disappearing direction, and I shook my head in disgust.

"Absolutely not."

"I don't like the way he talks to you."

"Me either."

Edward's mouth tightened, his teeth grinding as he stared at me. He swallowed something that must have tasted rotten, face twisting before his eye fell to my leg. "How's that gash? Feel okay?"

"Of course it doesn't."

"Let me look at it."

I shook my head. I couldn't let him touch me. Not now. I was still watching him lick his lips and still wondering what he was doing here. Still wondering how to feed myself and wake up in the mornings without that dreadful ache behind my heart. I couldn't let him touch me.

He rolled his eye and pointed at a chair. "Just sit."

There was no fight left in me.

I sat.

Gripping my chair, I watched him kneel in slow motion, his knee to the linoleum, head bent as he wrapped a big warm hand around my ankle. Fingers smoothing up my shin, pushing the hem of my nightdress up my thighs. The brush of his breath across my knees. He set my toes to his thigh, bracing my leg as he turned it, inspecting Dr. Clearwater's half-assed glue job. He was careful and thorough, silent for a long while, before he squinted up at me, thoughtful face and solemn eye.

"How old is too young?"

"That depends, doesn't it?"

"On?"

"How old _you_ are."

He huffed, an errant thumb absently rubbing a circle into the soft spot behind my ankle as he studied me. His eye everywhere. I didn't know whether to wither or bloom, shrink or sit straighter, and his hands still hadn't let go of my leg. My knees were brushing his t-shirt, and his eye was lingering somewhere near my collarbone, and he was skimming his top lip with the tip of his tongue.

"Seventeen," he said.

"No fucking way," I gasped.

He laughed out loud, a short chuckle that he reined back in almost as soon as he had set it free, like he had a bird trapped in his ribcage that he never let out. "Not me. _You_."

I shook my head. "Higher."

"Eighteen."

"I'm not a girl," I snipped. " _Higher_."

His eye fell back to my neck, gaze going heavy and deep as he licked his lip again, the bottom one this time. "Nineteen."

I clamped my thighs together and parlayed. "Thirty-five."

"Lower."

"Thirty."

His eyebrows raised, looking faintly delighted at my transgression. "That's not how it works."

"I'm narrowing my field. Thirty-four."

"Wait-"

"Thirty-two."

He scowled, which meant I'd hit my mark. "Twenty." He pointed a finger at me, dead center on my heart, and I couldn't lie.

"Bingo," I whispered, my face falling to stare at my lap. He was still rubbing that circle into my ankle, and I watched the pad of his thumb, the mindless whorl he was tracing onto me. As he followed my gaze, he seemed to realize what he was doing and jerked back into business mode over mindless small talk.

"It looks fine. Not infected. At least, not yet," he muttered, pulling my nightdress back down over my knees. When he stood, he looked woozy, as though there was too much blood in his head or too much air in the room, and he swayed on his feet in front of me.

"Think that boy is wrong. You're not too young for anything."

"I told you. He's just some kid whose mom sends him over to make sure the house is still standing, and I'm not dead."

"Seems he's doing a piss poor job of that." Edward did another one of those glances around the kitchen, his one eye disappointed enough for the both of them. "This house needs more than some kid coming over to check on it. And you—"

"He doesn't know what I need."

"What's that, exactly?" His eye narrowed, speculation and curiosity. "What _do_ you need?"

"Does it matter?" I snapped, fingers twitching around the bandage on my leg, and the fawn rubbing up against my calves like a cat, and oh my God, life was so confusing.

"It should," he said glumly.

I ran by him, up the stairs and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I was breathing hard enough to make my lungs burn and blinking back tears of rage. Humiliation. Disappointment. I stripped off the nightdress, flinging it aside, skin crawling. Let it crumple at my feet. The house quiet below except for the familiar thud of a hammer. I cranked the shower as hot as it would run, stepping underneath, washing my hair clean, and soaping myself down. My skin was sore to the touch, achy and timid. Cranky and curious. There was a tiny fire sparking to life right below the surface, coming on stealth and sly, full and tender, making me ache for something I didn't even know existed until he looked at me. Like that.

He must have liked what he saw because he didn't look away.

He looked harder.

 _Longer_.

I'd never kissed anybody. Never been kissed, not by anyone, much less someone so wild and out of place. Not by someone so splattered in scar tissue. Not by someone with only half of their vision and even less of their smile. I wondered what it would feel like… his mouth. Soft and overheated, warm and wet, and _oh God_ , I sent a zing clear down to the soles of my feet that left me gasping. I shut my eyes and did it again, letting my imagination run completely stark wild crazy with the thought of him. Downstairs. Sweating. Cursing. _Pounding_. I'd never had anyone to think about this way until he came along, and here I was, in the shower, not ten feet above him, letting my imagination slip his hand between my legs. Letting him breathe hot and heavy down my neck. His fingers and his tongue and his shoulders stretched tight underneath his t-shirt. The nails between his teeth and the wrinkles at the corner of his eye. The strip of skin showing above his jeans. His scars and his half-smile.

His hands.

His lips.

 _On me._

Fingers kneading down across my hips, between my thighs, slippery-wet and smooth. Sliding higher and deeper until the spot between my legs was crushed deliciously beneath him. He lit a fire in my belly that I could feel in my fingertips, tucked deep up inside, knuckles sliding sure and steady against all of my overwhelmed skin. His lips and his tongue... my throat, wrists, nipples… my high-anxiety heartbeat.

Feeding the fire with every lick and push and pull and thrust.

The water ran cold.

I stumbled out of the bath in a daze. Sat at the top of the steps completely naked, dripping water, watching him work. Every inch of my skin was prickling with static like the snow channels on the television, too fuzzy to see through. My fingertips were tingling, and something was burning in my belly, aching between my legs. I gripped the edge of the step as he pounded nails into my porch, fixing the hole I'd punched through it yesterday.

With the last nail sunk deep into the wood, he stood and dusted his hands off on his thighs, stretching his arms before he turned and glanced up the stairway, spotting me sopping wet and naked on the very top step. A puddle was dripping steadily onto the step below me, and my curls were starting to tangle. He tore his eyes away, looking out over the prairie and swallowing roughly.

"You better go put some clothes on."

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	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

As I hammered each nail into the battered wood, careful to avoid fingers like I still had something to save them for, I thought about what just took place in Bella's kitchen. That curly-haired farm boy was arrogant, full of piss and vinegar. Didn't bother me any that he puffed up his chest at me like any man would. Hell, if he hadn't, I'd have thought him soft.

What bothered me was he acted as though he was in charge there, like he was taking care of things. The rusty, old enamel stove tilting on its side and the half-broken light fixture above the warped table said otherwise.

I thought about the field that separated our houses and how it was creeping in and taking root in the cracks and crevices of the dusty plaster walls that were already abused. Her house was truly eating her alive.

If it was indeed that arrogant Jasper's job to look after her, he was failing worse than a pig in a schoolroom. The wood splintering beneath me raised up and said "amen" to that statement and lodged a thick, spiky splinter right through my shutter finger.

Panic at first, at the thought of the discomfort I'd have hitting the shutter button repeatedly, and then a sort of a nothing emptiness when I remembered I don't do that anymore. I could hammer my thumb as flat as a sliced mushroom, and it wouldn't matter, not anymore. Sticking it in my mouth to suck, I heard water running from somewhere above: the gentle, steady sound of a faucet. I looked up to see the window on the second floor cracked open, and with a quick mapping of the floor plan our houses shared, I realized it was coming from the bathroom I'd glanced at yesterday while fetching medical supplies.

Sitting on the porch, I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my shirt and closed my good eye, listening to the calm rush of water and then the unmistakable splash of someone _using_ that water. My mind conjured a picture of her sticking a toe in what I assumed would be the same iron claw- foot tub that was in mine. Her arms would be pulling that flimsy dress up and over herself before she lowered herself in, scrubbing at the skin I knew would be slick from soap, same as it was in the pond.

My thumb pulsed as I looked at it, taunting me because I wasn't paying attention as I swung that hammer while thinking of something else. Something that wasn't my business, _shouldn't_ be my business. That Jasper prick felt he had the right to talk to me like that? To lay down orders where Bella was concerned when he obviously had no control over anything? And to do it right in front of her like she wasn't even there?

No, I didn't like the way he spoke to her. Like a girl he was in charge of taking care of. Like he _owned_ her and had a right to tell her what to do. Like he was disappointed with choices she made.

He spoke to her like a child.

But the Bella in the transparent dress, the Bella naked in the creek, and the Bella naked above me sure as shit was no child.

 _Twenty. Calm down, Edward._

I shook my finger out in front of me, assessing the red, angry wound and tried to get the images of her in the bath out of my head. Wet and slippery, her skin warm, and her eyelashes holding tiny droplets of water as she raised her arms to suds up her hair. Images like that would lead me nowhere, a useless line of thinking. She was just a neighbor I was helping out, not someone I wanted to get involved with in any way.

She was nothing but a charity case, an orphan. Someone who the part of me that was trying to make up for past sins had decided it needed to help.

The words from the old men at the hardware store circled around, and I thought about that picture I found, the one of the woman in Bella's dress holding a baby. The baby looked real in the picture, and I couldn't quite guess at what they meant when they were talking about dolls.

I don't know what made me so angry and possessive of her in that moment and the brief encounter with Jasper. Maybe there really was a good part of me left, still buried inside, who knew someone had to watch out for her lest this behemoth of a landmine crumble around her and take her with it into the ground. Or maybe the selfish blood was still running through me, and I figured the house would take down my property value with it. That was a thought that felt more at home, but it ran cold all the same.

The splish-splash of the water continued, so I went back to banging nails into the rotted wood, the ache in my finger a dull roar.

The last nail entered the last board, and I stood to stretch, my back protesting and making a satisfying cracking sound. Groaning a bit, I twisted to loosen up the knots, and that's when I saw her, shivering and wet, on her top stop, sitting and staring at me.

And she was as naked as the day she was born.

My eye saw too much skin, a hint of color at her breast. I could feel my face heat as my fingers clenched together, forgetting the sting of the splinter as I turned away to swallow.

Turning back slightly, so as not to look at her full on, I muttered. "You better go put some clothes on." I flung my tools into the box with more force than necessary.

The clatter of iron tools masked her approach, and I froze as I felt her hand on my arm. I looked at it, the dampness lingering from her bath burning my skin like holy water. My eye snapped to her. Her skin was pink, her hair slicked back and starting to dry on the ends, and I did the second worst thing I've ever done in my life.

I leaned in.

I wanted to kiss her.

My dick twinged as a little gasp came from her lips at my approach. I couldn't stop my hand from curling around her neck, tangling itself in the wet hair that tickled my knuckles. My eye and mind traveled to how the pink of her nipples mirrored the color of a brilliant sunset captured at the end of the world, and her silky skin held droplets that would reflect the light of a flash to shine like diamonds in black and white.

She moved closer, her hot little body almost flush against mine. I thought about how clean and pure she was, pressed up against my dirty clothes, and that fact turned into the metaphor for everything that was wrong with me.

Just before I let my mouth touch down to hers, I pushed her away from me. Not enough to make her stumble but enough to put distance between us.

Without another look, I carried that heavy box all the way across the field, making my arms ache. What did she think she was doing parading around like that, walking around with not a stitch on? Maybe those townies were right. Maybe there was something wrong and crazy about her.

The tools hit me hard in the thigh and made my swollen thumb sting with each bump as I stomped across that field, angry at myself for getting sucked in. Who did she think she was, making me worry about her house? What the hell was I supposed to do now that I'd set it up that I could be relied on for anything?

Confused and eager to take out my frustrations, I stormed to the battered shed and began throwing items out on the gravel driveway. Decades-old rusty metal and car parts, broken window frames and expired license plates—they all got tossed out on the ground in my frenzy to rid my mind of the damn girl across the field and her stupid life. The reason I came here, to shut myself away and be alone, roared to the surface with a new vengeance. I needed to concentrate on _my_ house and _my_ things and _my_ screwed up life. Can't worry about deer that think they're human or vines that creep in and eat everything they cover.

And I especially couldn't worry about soft, young, sweet lips that would taste better than anything I could remember in a long, long time.

I spun in my uncertainty and rage, kicked a rusty crate, then sat down on it hard. I dropped my head in my hands as it ached, full of all my fucked up thoughts.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

He almost kissed me, and then he left.

Or maybe I almost kissed him. And then he left.

He'd been all action, nails in the porch and tools in the box, and then I rendered him flustered and speechless, his eye stuck on me and his hands twitching toward my thighs. His teeth had been set so hard into his lip it turned his mouth white. He grabbed me fast and rough, clutching me up close, and we'd been right there, _right there_ , before his whole face changed. He came so close, but then he turned and fled, his silhouette getting smaller and smaller as he disappeared into the grass.

I was stuck in the doorway, hovering and indecisive. His hand around my neck, pulling me closer, pulling me deeper, pulling like a black hole sucks in a stray comet. Pulling like the flame entices a moth. I could feel him between my legs, between my ribs, between the cells of my skin and my brain and my rumbling, heavy heart.

I ran right out the door after him, stark naked.

The sun hit my skin, and I stumbled to a halt on the edge of that stupid, caving-in porch, scanning the distance between our houses for him. He was already out of sight. I plodded back up the stairs, stopping for a moment in the hallway to contemplate the nightdress still lying crumpled on the bathroom floor: grey as a raincloud, broken as a windowpane bird. I tore my eyes away from it, a sick feeling in my stomach.

My room was a disaster. The bed rumpled and the hardwood littered with piles of my life, hoarded into the lone square of space I still liked in this godforsaken house. I picked my way to the closet, throwing it open, pulling out the first thing I touched. Slipped something short and yellow over my head, the color too cheerful and the hem too high. The sun was edging toward the grasslands, throwing columns of light through the windows. Everything had gone still, the floors and the fridge and even the front door, sighing instead of groaning. Even the bugs had gone silent, and the birds, as though the earth was settling down to wait, eager to know what the heck I was even doing.

I left the house, slipping through the grass and up to his house, the fawn trailing my footprints.

Tottering along the lip of something cavernous.

He wasn't there.

I circled the house once, the fawn poking along behind me. The house was quiet. The flag drifted lazily in the breeze, the shed looking hollow and empty: its insides spilled out onto the grass as though he'd spent most of the day gutting the contents. I called his name from the edge of the back porch but was answered in nothing but laboring bees and the whispering wind. I knocked once, twice, three times before I tried the door, surprised when it edged open without resistance. He didn't strike me as the type to leave the place so unsecured.

The kitchen was silent.

"Edward?"

The old couple still lingered in the air. Jack and Millie. They had been more like grandparents than not. He had been imposingly tall, despite his warped spine, hunched beneath the weight of age and hard labor. She had been small, all bones and energy, feeding fifty farmhands a night for most of her life—a true ranch girl. I spent more afternoons than I could even remember in this kitchen, set to snapping peas or picking through dried beans, while Millie schooled me on the finer points of childhood, then girlhood.

She had been too far gone to tell me what to expect about this whole womanhood thing.

Their home was a sad, empty shell of what it had once been. Bare remnants left of a lifetime, the house devoid of its clutter and kitsch. The carpets were left on the floors, woven blue wool that was worn smooth in trails around invisible furniture, gone threadbare all around the edges. The sagging velvet couch slouched solitary in the front room. The dark spots left on the sun-bleached wallpaper where their picture frames had hung. Most of what I remembered as a kid—the glass flowers in the cut crystal vase in the living room, the embroidered towels in the bathroom— were gone.

New things were in their place.

There was a jacket hanging on a peg by the door and a pair of worn, floppy boots on the floor below, the color of dirt. A stack of envelopes on the table and a mess of painting supplies in the kitchen sink. Wrinkled sheets on the lone mattress on the floor in the upstairs bedroom, and a pile of clothing crumpled on the bathroom floor. Other than that, there was no sign of him here. Barely a smudge of his existence marring the history inside the walls of a house that had seen so much.

"Edward?" I called.

The fawn went zooming by me, a clatter of hooves and ears too big for her body. She skipped clear to the end of the hallway and bounded up the steps to the attic. Six of them, halfway up. She stopped to look back at me, eyes wide and ears waggling.

"Get down here," I hissed, stomping and pointing at my foot, like I could will her to me. I still hadn't named the deer and had nothing to call her by. The Cherokee had a name for fawn, _Awenita_ , but I was constantly reminded of the name the town librarian used to call me when I talked too much, too loud, too often. She would shush at me from across the room with a finger to her lips.

 _Little Thunder_ , she called me.

"I'm gonna start calling you Wakiya if you don't straighten up," I grumbled.

The fawn ignored me. It took another couple of steps and looked impishly at me again, teasing. I leapt for her, banging my toes on the bottom step and hitting my kneecap hard enough to make me gasp. Her tail twitched, hooves clambering, and she kept ahead of me until we were clear into the walk-up attic, all the way up beneath the roof. The room was covered in a fine layer of dust, recently disturbed, and the windows at either end, splattered and dirty, hadn't been washed in ages.

There were boxes everywhere. Big and small, stacked in piles clear to the ceiling. Labeled in handwriting that was slanted heavily to the right. A halo of faded footprints in the dust circled the piles of boxes. The rooms downstairs were so empty, stark and barren, compared to the mess hidden up here. Hoarded away. Packed up tight and stashed somewhere out of sight.

I stood fidgeting in the dust, the curiosity crawling up and down my skin until it was unbearable. He was a dime store mystery, a once-in-a-lifetime treasure map. A lucky penny. A Pandora's box. I was torn in a thousand different directions, flayed open right there in the dust, over the conflict of wanting to know more, wanting to know it _all_ , but not entirely sure that I wanted the truth.

Wracked with guilt but dying to know.

If I was a cat, I was using up the last of my nine lives.

A box of books. A box of winter gear, gloves, and hats. A box of socks, crew cut and pristine, nothing paired up in the jumbled mess. The fourth box took all my effort to open. It was taped over so many times, I half-wondered if the contents were something best left alone.

A box full of cameras.

There was a heavy-duty, black case with a big zipper sitting right on top. I didn't dare touch the camera with my tape-sticky fingers, something big and expensive looking, nestled in that black padded bag. Heavy and complicated, buttons and knobs everywhere, with a big lens tucked in beside it.

The next box opened easily. A jacket. Camo. Sun-faded and gigantic, limp without a body inside of it. I put it on. It smelled like him. Like him in a desert. Sand and heat and sweat. Hanging clear to my knees, falling beyond my fingertips. I shoved my hands into the giant pockets and pulled out a Zippo. Silver and shiny, the flame still strong.

I spun in the dust, scanning the far wall of the attic: stacks of thin wood, clusters of frames piled up against the eaves. I left a necklace of footprints in the dust as I wandered through them, pulling them apart to peek at the images. Photographs. Hundreds of them. Snapshots of places I could only dream of, daydream vacations I'd only ever seen in books, the world through his eye. Beaches where the sand was pink. Mountain tops carpeted with lush yellow flowers. Cows wallowing through a thousand acres of prairie grass. Ancient pine trees piercing a cloud bank. A harbor pebbled with peeling boats—the tide gone out and flocks of birds come in.

Everything was beautiful. Everything was peaceful and paradise, sunshine, and flowers.

Until it wasn't.

When it started to slip, it went downhill hard and fast into the parts of the world that were too ugly to even comprehend. A boy, young and dark-skinned, scowling—a giant gun in his hand and the background eaten up by smoke and fire. A building collapsed in the middle and a man sobbing on his knees in the dirt before it, hunched in the rubble over some sort of invisible ache. A woman, half-naked, blood running down her arms and legs, standing in the middle of a flattened city block. A bridge crumpled into the water, a bloated cow and a sunken vehicle lingering near a shoreline.

An open desert sky. Pockmarked by a flock of fighter jets.

I gulped and let the frames fall back. Suddenly, the jacket didn't smell so good. Instead of dust and sweat—it was fear and blood. It was scars: the ones that covered his skin and the ones buried too deep beneath it for me to even see. It was broken vision and head wounds and comatose hearts.

I trailed back to the camera, the box singing to me. I wiped my fingers on my dress and pulled it out of its bag, hefting it to my face, peering through the screen. Nothing. Just black. Maybe it was broken. Maybe it had never worked at all. Maybe it had gotten hurt along with him, and he didn't want it nearby because they were both too injured to work properly. I squinted harder and fumbled blindly around the end of the lens, my fingers connecting with the cap, prying it loose just in time to see Edward pound up into the attic through the camera.

He cleared the final step, and his eye fell on me, his face giving way as he glared up and down the entire mess of me. The camera around my neck and the jacket slipping off my shoulders, the nightdress replaced by sunshine yellow, so much of me just laid out there instead of closeted away. The wild hair and the wild eyes.

His mouth twisted. Brows crumbled. The soft parts of his face that I had been dreaming about for the last two hours warped into sharpened fangs and a forked tongue.

The Hopi had a name for him.

 _Chu'si._

Snake flower.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

I sat in the chaotic shed, sucking on my still-sore finger. Sucking at my wounds both physical and emotional. Wallowing like a baby who just threw a tantrum.

The gravel driveway was littered with my outburst, and my fingernails were tinged orange underneath from the years of rust on someone else's treasures as I threw them as far as possible. Some had landed in my ire more than ten yards away, easy. Staring at the smashed and broken relics laid out before me, I felt horrible guilt that I treated so carelessly something precious and saved by someone else.

Sure, it was mostly junk, but it wasn't _my_ junk. I stood and started making neat piles of the crooked metal and cracked plastic, stuff to take to the dump, and stuff I might be able to get some use out of around the house.

A bent bicycle tire rim was a good find as was the axe with no handle. That I could fix well enough—there was plenty of good wood stacked tall in the corners that didn't seem to have termite or water damage. A few railing posts, chipped but unharmed, got saved too, just in case I needed to fix up the porch someday.

Someday. I was thinking about someday, surprised after all that happened the last few days that I was still in the mood to stay put long enough to think of the what-ifs and the just-in-cases. The thought made my mouth dry, and I remembered the jug I'd found in the kitchen. I filled it with the lemonade powder Rosalie had gotten me, thinking what I needed right now was to sit on the rocker, drink my drink, and stare out over the wildflowers and tall grasses. From my porch, if I were sitting, I didn't think I'd be able to see the sad house.

As the pale yellow liquid poured, making the ice cubes crackle and hiss, a few bumps from above made me stop mid-pour and stare at the water-stained ceiling. I waited, then took a few gulps from the half-filled glass as I continued to listen. Hearing nothing but the spirits of the couple before me, I was about to make my way back outside when I heard it again.

Footsteps.

But these weren't normal footsteps; these were the clip-clop of an animal. Hooves. And I knew exactly what those hooves belonged to.

Wiping my lemonade-stained mouth with the back of my wrist, I ran up the stairs, concerned the deer had gotten loose. It was scared and confused, wandering hallways looking for its ma in a house that mirrored its own but was completely different.

Once I reached the landing of the second floor, I slowed, not wanting to scare the thing more than it probably already was. I peeked out through the window in the hall over to the sad house to see if Bella was searching or calling its name, but not seeing her, I turned and waited for another clue as to where the deer might be.

A loud clip of a hoof made me turn sharply to where the sound had come from.

The attic.

The stairs leading to it were at the farthest end of the hallway, away from my bedroom and bathroom. I never went near there, as there was no door at the top to hold the ghosts in. I thought about yelling, trying to coax the deer down from the cemetery that lived above me, but worried that would only end in frightening it more.

Besides, I didn't know what to call it. _Here, deer, deer._ No.

Creeping over the faded, blue carpet runner in the hallway, my heart jumped as soon as I put my hand on the banister. Was it worth the trip up there just to get the stupid thing? I hadn't been up there since Rosalie and I shoved the boxes far into the corners, and I hadn't planned on going back up anytime soon.

The cobwebs up there weren't just from spiders.

Sighing and not wanting the deer to go on a rampage, destroying things in its attempt to get out, I walked up slowly, my head cresting the top step, and my eye peering just enough to get a location of the deer.

What I saw instead made my heart completely stop.

Deer Girl was standing in the middle of the floor, holding the one thing I was ashamed I had once cherished more than my own brother's life.

It was held up to her face, pressed against her skin and looking clumsy in her hands as she turned around and pointed the camera at me. Slowly, she lowered it from her eyes, now wide as she stared at me, caught, like a deer in headlights as I reached the top step.

Red is all I saw as I stood there, seeing with my eye but seeing past just the facts. Seeing more than a girl holding a camera wearing a dusty flak jacket. I saw my whole life laid out bare, splayed out around her, like a bloody trail from a horror movie.

My heart quickened then, with a fury unmatched by any gunfire that had ever enveloped me.

The growl that started in my chest rose like fire. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?" My voice was low, shaky, menacing, as images of what I'd seen through that lens burned through my head, flashes of gray dirt soaked crimson from the blood of women and children.

The last image I ever saw in it bubbled up like bile in my throat as I noticed one of my dirty green footlockers open to her right.

"I—" she started, but I didn't let her finish.

"Who the fuck do you think you are." Not a question. I slowly got closer until I was standing directly in front of her, my fists shaking along with my knees.

"I wasn't… I didn't mean…" She curled back on herself as I towered over her, and the hand holding my camera gently lowered so it was resting at her side. That's when I noticed the coat slipping off her shoulders.

The plastic and metal burned my fingers as I grabbed the camera from her, wrenching the strap from around her neck, so it pulled at her hair. I yanked the coat down, so it lay in a puddle around her feet, revealing a short, yellow dress.

"Do you have any idea—" I barked, my voice dry with the fury. "Just who do you think you are?"

"The deer ran up here, and I wanted to get her—I was coming to see you, to apologize or something, I don't know—"

"Fuck you and that deer. Coming into _my_ house. Tearing through _my_ things." She opened her mouth again, a bit of offense in those brown eyes of hers. "Don't say a fucking word." I grabbed her bare arm then, pulling her forward. She grunted a little at the force, but I was too mad to even consider not physically removing her from my attic.

I pulled her towards the stairs, my grip too firm as I led her down, the deer background noise as it clomped after us. She wisely said nothing, just let me pull her, as we wound our way to the bottom floor.

Out the porch door she went with a bit of a shove from me as I released her, and she had the wits enough to not look back as she ran across the field, back towards her pitiful house with the deer hot on her heels.

* * *

I'm not sure how long I stood there by the back door with my eye closed, trying to calm myself and stop the flashes of guilt and anger and remorse and so many other things.

No one knew what those boxes held. No one but Rosalie and me, and we could both pretend they didn't exist. We could talk to each other without ever having to mention the boxes.

I busied myself with the kitchen, cleaning up spilled lemonade and washing the mostly unused glass. Scrubbed my hands and nails with a Brillo pad, watching the rust run orange with the water and soap until it swirled down and around the chipped farmhouse sink and slipped into the drain.

I peered out the window as I rested my damp hands on the sink edge and looked at the mess on my driveway. Mess down here, now mess up there. Sighing heavily, my head dropped as I felt dizzy from the adrenaline and anger slowly seeping from me. I imagined it flowing from my feet and burrowing through the cracks in the linoleum, soaking the sub-floor to pool under the crawlspace of the porch.

Rosalie would be happy to know I'd used one of her beloved "coping mechanisms".

Rosalie.

When I had finally returned home, broken and reluctant, out of excuses and delays from red tape, Rosalie was the last person I wanted to see. The meeting was forced upon me, and I stood in the chapel waiting for furious fists to pound at me and rip the hair from my head. Waited for the inevitable slaps and scratches, the kicks and screams that would rip out what was left of my shriveled heart.

Instead, as I stood there, stony face to the floor, ashamed of myself and what I'd let happen, the sweet arms of my sister-in-law embraced me and coaxed my head onto her shoulder. I stood numbly, wishing that all the tears I'd been building up would finally spill out and down the back of her black dress.

Rosalie was the one who helped me heal the little bit that I had, helped me come to some half-assed resolution within myself that I wasn't a complete monster, when she could've punished me more than anyone.

The man responsible for her husband's death.

Pushing myself off the counter, knowing I wouldn't be able to sleep under that attic with the foot locker open to let the ghosts out to play, I grabbed the bottle of whiskey and headed up the stairs on leaden feet, like a man shuffling to his execution.

I half-expected to see her back up there, fiddling with stuff, and I felt a pang of guilt at how I'd led her down, my grip too tight on a girl that fragile. But that only lasted a second as I put my bottle on the spot brushed clean of dust from her feet. My eye caught a glint of silver, and I knew the Zippo had fallen from the pocket of my jacket. It was just lying there in the dirt, so I quickly scooped it up and dropped it back into its home.

Glancing around quickly to find other evidence of her meddling, I saw the framed photos not neatly stacked as I'd left them, but flipped open like a rack of records someone lost interest in halfway through.

My mouth ran dry as sawdust when I looked at what she'd seen. The images were disturbing to me now, horrific as they stared back at me. Black and white, brown and gritty, pitiful and something no one should see. Certainly not something someone should make a living from.

They were no longer something to be proud of.

Flipping them up carefully to close the gap and shield the horror, I turned them so they faced the musty rafters. My hand stilled on one before I flipped it, the image jarring in its beauty after the terror that it laid against.

Argentine, Patagonia. The Perito Moreno Glacier. Blue and heavy, you could almost touch the picture and feel the cool ice as it stung your fingers. I traced the hollowed ice cave with my thumb, the millions of blues my lens captured making my eye explode and ache.

Setting that one aside, the next was less stark, less formidable, but stunning nonetheless. The poppy-covered fields of Antelope Valley spread out for miles of red, caught by my low angle just kissing the blue sky as they rose majestically towards the sun.

One of my very first.

The next few were much the same, a landscape in Oregon, an old silo covered in modern-day graffiti in Oklahoma, a lone cactus clinging to life in Death Valley.

I hadn't looked at these images in years. I smiled at them, remembering what it felt like to find beauty with your naked eye, then try to capture it behind a small glass lens, and have it be just as breathtaking on paper once developed. This was what made me love the camera: the wonders of what God or whoever put at our feet to enjoy, captured so flawlessly.

The whiskey sat forgotten, as much as my fear, and I went through the next stack. Kids playing basketball on a blacktop in Atlanta. Aging, wrinkled men sitting on a park bench in Central Park, smiling as they shared a laugh. A young boy, shirtless, with the sun behind him, driving a high tractor as sweat ran down his head onto his shoulders in a Missouri field.

There was always the hope of a small paycheck in my pocket if an odd magazine would buy a pretty nature scene here or there. But those last few were when the change came: from shooting for pleasure to shooting with a mission. It became something I wanted to be the best at, so I started shooting people exclusively. People found other people much more interesting, and the magazines agreed.

A man wearing a blood-soaked apron outside a butcher shop in Italy, a big cigar in his mouth. A small Siberian girl running in the snow, her pigtails sticking straight out behind her as she smiled in her fur-lined, embroidered, animal hide jacket. A female punk singer covered in tattoos in Moscow, performing at an underground club before it was raided.

My popularity grew, and my name became one that people started to recognize, but it wasn't until I turned from taking feel-good images to capturing the ugly side of life that I got what I thought I wanted.

Money. Lots of fucking money. Which in turn gave me the credit and acclaim I'd been working so hard for. It only heightened my need to become one of the most sought-after photojournalists in the world.

So I shot the ugly.

The poachers in the Congo carrying an illegally slaughtered gorilla on a thick log across their shoulders, both smiling for my camera, and giving a thumbs up like what they had done wasn't horrible. Two little girls clinging to dirty rag dolls, their stuffing spilling out from missing fabric arms and legs, in a makeshift shanty town in India.

When I got to the one of the half-burned boy in Croatia, I knew it was time to stop.

I left the pictures where they were and moved to the camera, gently put it away—shut up tight in its leather bag—then closed the foot locker with a muffled thud. Picking up the whiskey, I saw the dust-disturbed circle of footprints in the middle of the floor and felt a pang of guilt.

She didn't know: a girl like her probably had no idea what existed outside of her little meadow. She probably did follow the deer, and who wouldn't be curious about closed boxes and foreign objects?

It didn't give her the fucking right to look without asking, but I could've handled it better.

Wishing again that there was a door to close and lock, I trudged down the stairs, heavy with remorse. It'd been a long time since I was with civilians, especially pretty little things who probably expected gentlemen callers and lemonade on porches.

Spying the lemonade pitcher on the counter, I knew what I should do. I should go over and apologize, say I'm sorry for grabbing her like that and tossing her around like she was an object. Sorry for my fury and pain and for all the needles I shot into her from my eye and words.

But I didn't, not just then. Instead, I made a quick trip out to my toolbox on the porch before coming back in. I held the one picture I brought downstairs with me and looked at that long, blank wall, littered in shadows and faded paper. Holding the frame up against the plaster, I picked a spot and drove the nail in before placing the picture carefully on the nail head by its thin, silver wire.

The first glimpse of sunrise began its yellow, red, and orange dance across Lake Ballard in Australia, warming up the metal sculpture of a woman left there in the middle of the water. The title of the award-winning photograph was handwritten on the white border: "New Beginning" by Edward Cullen.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

I hit my screen door like an earthquake, rattling the frame and warping the mesh. The wood groaned, but those newly sturdy hinges held despite the ten trillion pounds of me who barreled into them—freshly oiled and screwed tightly into place by the same hands that had just thrown me loose into the grass. I sagged against the door, flopping onto the porch with air burning in my lungs, head scattered, something boiling hot and fierce in my guts. The ache behind my ribs was worse, so much worse than the throbbing sting of my arm. My arm would bruise for certain. It felt like his million-watt handprint was burned into my skin. But, my heart…

My heart was throbbing like the sad, empty hollow of a gutted goldmine.

The fawn clattered up the steps after me, her eyes wide, her knees knocking, and her ears drooping. She knew we'd done something really bad. I didn't cry until she nosed up against me, then my arms around her as my insides finally reached the point of implosion. I cried myself dry, which happened surprisingly fast, and let the sun start to set around me. It had just touched its belly to the horizon when a crunch of gravel pulled my sticky face out of the fawn's fur.

The slam of the car door sent the fawn running down the backside of the porch toward the garden. I staggered to my feet, brushing my face free of tears, watching Jacob set his hat on his head and peer around the overgrown yard before he headed up the steps toward me.

"Ms. Swan." He took off his ridiculous hat, his head shaved clean. I'd only ever remember him with the long, black silk of hair that hung in his eyes all of our lives. His uniform was so crisp and nice and clean, such a change from the wild, dirty boy who used to throw mud at me and hated bathing more than he hated bedtime.

"You don't have to call me that, you know?"

"Protocol." Jacob shrugged and smiled. "Ask me in; we need to talk."

His eyes skittered toward Edward's house in the distance, narrowing at the corners while his brows pulled down in the middle. His gaze didn't loosen as he shifted it back across my worn-out porch and the ivy swallowing the siding. My red face. The too-short yellow dress. His mouth was as tight as his eyes. He looked funny in the uniform, like he was only playing dress up, though the serious look on his face was a completely different tune.

"Edward's not a problem," I blurted, biting the edge of my tongue on accident when his name got caught up in my mouth. I could taste a sting of blood and winced.

Jacob's eyebrows raised, one cocked just a little higher than the other. "I didn't say nothing bout him. _Should_ I have?" He scanned the length of me: the cop in him looking for obvious signs of trauma, the friend in him looking for more subtle signs of impact. I tucked my arm bearing Edward's supernova handprint behind myself, glaring hard enough to keep him focused on my face instead of the rest of me.

"Don't you dare listen to a single word he says, Jacob. You and I both know he can't keep his damn trap shut." I was gonna give Jasper a piece of my mind, a big piece, the next time he showed up here. Of course he'd run to big brother Jacob. I knew for a fact that Jasper had probably spilled every bean he owned over a six pack, and that was why Jacob was standing here at sundown on a weeknight.

"Jasper ain't the only one talking, Bella." Jacob leaned over to press a hand to the screen door behind me, swinging it open and presenting the empty hallway to me as though he'd brought me a present. "After you."

We sat in the kitchen, and I gave him some water and some strawberries because I couldn't think straight with him sitting there like that. The specter of his former youth was bursting at the seams, the polyester shirt squeezing at his muscles. I was terrified of what he had to say and why he was here. My mind skittered across clumps of grass and clover and tree roots to a spot not nearly far enough away, the small freshly-dug grave hidden between a flagpole and big old empty expanse of nothing.

He didn't waste any time.

"Pickens is getting antsy." He shook his head. "He wants to find the gun."

"Why? She's dead. What does it even matter?"

"Where'd it even come from? I didn't know there was a gun in this house all those years."

"Me neither," I grumbled. "I never saw it. When I got down here, she was... and I didn't exactly have time to stop and look for the damn thing."

Lies taste like rotten strawberries and lead-laced water.

Jacob leaned forward on both elbows, peering hard at my face like he could see into my soul. "You're sure? _Think_ , Bella. Think hard about it; you were right there." He glanced toward the hallway, and his eyes fell back to me, imploring me to play along.

"No shit," I hissed, eyeing him pointedly, knowing he'd remember her well enough. I'd called him over more than a few times to calm her down or at least get me out of here when he couldn't do that. She had more and more moments that were so unhinged from reality that it felt as though she was ripping the fabric of the universe in half. Separating herself with a ragged tear down the middle.

"You know how she was, Jacob. Everything was fine until it wasn't. She flipped. She was just _there_ , right there." I pointed at the hallway, my voice rising and my hands trembling, fanning the flame of something small and half dead into a fury. "I didn't exactly give a shit about how it happened because all of a sudden, it was _happening._ I don't think I need to describe it for you."

I scowled, feeling some small taste of triumphant victory at the way his face paled around the edges, staring at the hallway. He'd been the first on the scene and found me crouching beside my dead mother, covered in blood. I stared at the hallway, my mouth going dry and my veins shaking. I'd never be able to forget the smell or forget the feel of it. Blood—warm and sticky and thick like maple syrup. My fingerprints were left all over her face and her hands and my neck. It took nine long, labored breaths for the light to slip out of her. Two agonizing minutes for her soul to push up out of the bullet wound in her chest. Five minutes for her grip on my hand to loosen.

Death doesn't come in a moment, instantaneously or rushed.

It comes in a slow motion fog that feels like a millennium has passed in the blink of an eye.

I almost screamed out loud when the fawn appeared suddenly right there in the hallway, glowing around the edges from the sunlight pouring through the open door, standing right over the spot where I'd been replaying my own personal tragedy before my eyes.

"What is _that_?" Jacob asked, sounding so much like Jasper that I wanted to hit him for it.

The fawn looked to the living room, then up the stairs, before she spotted me in the kitchen. She bounced across the linoleum, oblivious of Jacob, until she was halfway into the room. When she noticed him, she floundered against the slick floor, jumping two feet in the air and clambering wildly for me on a mess of spindly legs. She cowered beneath my chair, peering out from between my ankles. Jacob held a slow, steady hand out toward her, muttering something under his breath.

He was probably cursing my stupidity, but it sounded like he was coaxing her closer.

The fawn tottered forward, stretching her neck and trembling from head to foot, until the moment her nose made contact with Jacob's hand. She lunged forward, pressing up between his knees to rub her face into his stomach and get her ears scratched. It didn't surprise me in the least. He had always been good with wild things.

"This thing probably has fleas," he grumbled, scratching away anyhow. "Should take her to that wildlife rescue out by Dodge City."

"I'm feeding her," I protested.

"Needs more than just feeding, Bells."

"I want her—she's mine. I'm…" I faltered, a spark of something hot and sweet and light in my heart making me tear up a little, the creature almost smiling at me from beneath Jacob's hand. "I'm hers."

"She needs a bath, a good one. And don't give her too many strawberries. It'll make her stomach hurt."

"Noted."

"How's that leg, by the way? Old Man Johnson is a liar, I see; you obviously didn't have to get it amputated." Jacob grinned wryly, shaking his head. "Shoulda known better than to believe that old drunk."

"When people talk, Jacob, you just tell them to shut up. They don't know about anything. _Ever_." I scowled out the window—town just two miles away but loomed like an empire over my humble, dirty hovel.

Jacob gave a brief rundown of town gossip, which wasn't much considering the less-than-800 population. The Millers had finally gotten a divorce. Stacey Keenan had run off with some boy from Pierre, and rumor was, she was pregnant again. The Newtons were still waiting for their employee to come back to work; they missed her so and sorely needed the help. I glared extra hard at Jacob, clamping my jaw extra tight, until he gave up and went on. The school house needed a new roof, but the lead pipes at the police station were getting worse by the day, and there wasn't much money. Old Mel had cancer. Lisa Reid had a feral cat problem. Oh, and some new fellow had moved into the Jenkins place, next door to the young girl whose mom hadn't even been dead a week, God rest her broken soul. He'd painted his house funny and driven the girl to town once, full leg amputation 'cause her porch caved in.

Verified by the secretary's niece's daughter's boyfriend.

"Goddamn everyone and their talk, Jacob. Just goddamn them," I spit. "He's not what they think he is."

"Yeah, 'bout that guy." Jacob cleared his throat, not looking at me when he spoke. "Honest with you, Bella…" He shrugged. "Fuck everyone. I looked into him; he's clean. Seen some crazy shit in his time, but he's clean."

"Clean?"

"No arrests. No DUI. Not even a damn speeding ticket." He looked at me. "Clean. I think you're safe enough."

My vision went fish-eyed.

Edward spitting flame and vitriol. Edward looming over me like a mountain, unclimbable and potentially lethal. Edward grabbing me hard enough to make my bones yelp and marching me down the stairs like a child. Edward pushing me off the porch so hard all I could do was hit the ground running so I wouldn't fall right on my face.

I shifted in my chair, my skin feeling prickly and hot, trying to hide my arm and the red welts that were blushing my skin. Now, the temptation, the thirst for him was tainted with a hint of trepidation. Fear. Willful, reckless danger. His shell was only the beginning of it, his exterior rubbed raw and scarred. But his insides... I knew for certain that his insides were injured in a way that would warrant unfathomable survival from your physical form. His heart and his head had experienced something no human could withstand, and those kinds of injuries were often the ones that just never healed. Always open. Always weepy. Always oozing blood.

Despite it all, I wanted more. Despite the sharp, venomous fang of fear that tore through me, there was a flicker of something that I couldn't ignore. At a moment when I should have been worried about my mother and the house and what the hell I was going to do with my life, I was worried about not having enough time to figure this guy out before he disappeared.

Or I did.

* * *

I spent the night in her room.

Digging.

I didn't know what I was looking for.

Her bed was still made. I threw the doll across the room, and it hit with a thud in the far corner as I climbed onto the mattress. I pulled the velvet throw off the foot of the bed, wrapping it around myself. It still smelled like her. Her, but from far away—a ghost stuck in there just like Edward's had been stuck inside that jacket.

I lay on her bed, reading the dog-eared book from her nightstand as the sky finally went black. Trashy romance, go figure. The deer explored the room around me, tripping over piles of clothing and knocking over the lamp when her legs got tangled in the cord. She sniffed around the edge of the bed, a whine in her throat, until I hauled her up next to me, letting her snuggle close. She was all gangly legs and sharp hooves, smelling like grass and dust.

Jacob was right, she did need a bath.

Morning was creeping across the flatlands, the sky lightening up to deep lavender and blue. We took the green flower soap with us to the stream to wash up and watch the sun rise. It was warm—the air lifting and the birds coming awake, and I scrubbed up the fawn, blissful and still for the first moment in a long time, the water foaming soap lilies around us.

The sight of my arm, the fat purple bruise that was rising up from deep below my skin, peppered with soapy bubbles, ruined everything.

Edward taught me something brand new yesterday when he ripped his jacket from my shoulders. When he grabbed me in the dusty attic full of all of his dead memories and told me to shut up. When he shoved me away. He taught me something I didn't know yet. Now that I did... I couldn't understand how anyone could go through life _without_ knowing it.

Someone else could come along and just plant a seed in you.

They could brush up against you and light a spark. Flick their fingers and send your whole universe tumbling. Without even asking. Without even a warning. In moments that felt like chaos and confusion, they could roll over everything like a wave of atomic heat and just crush all your mundane, boring problems to dust. It felt like licking the sun. Like kissing a falling comet. Like wrapping my arms around a supernova.

I could barely understand how he was able to do that.

To me.

He flung me around like a rag doll, and then he made me leave him there looking like a broken toy. And even though I felt older than every person on earth, as tired as a million-year-old mountain, I knew what he saw. A girl. I was small. Simple. Stuck here with sharp, homemade visions, nothing like his big, world-weary life. I hadn't seen pink beaches, or flower-covered mountains, or even a dead body before, save for one. I'd never been to the kinds of places where children carry guns larger than themselves or where songbirds were replaced by the hawks of war. I only knew about the open prairies: the green storms that blew across them and the way seedlings pushed up through the soil every spring without fail.

I rubbed down the fawn's neck, but all I could feel was his gaze—the scorching-fire one. All I could imagine was his mouth. The scratch of his beard. The dig of his fingers. All I could feel was his breath between my lips. Distracted by his tongue and his nose and his teeth. I thought about his hands, his knuckles and his wrists, and the hardest kinds of work that make hands look the way his did. I thought about his chest, covered in scars as though he'd been caught like a dove in a flurry of shrapnel and stone. I thought about how his jaw always looked clenched around some invisible ache. I thought about his eye, the green one. And that patch over the other.

I had to go back. The guilt was bubbling in my guts, and my heart felt as heavy as a stone dropped into the middle of a big empty ocean. If curiosity killed the cat, I was dead nine times over for that single transgression. The way he'd looked at me… the way his face pulled in at the middle, and his eye went sharp and frigid green like a spring-fresh tree suddenly plunged into the dead of winter… I felt myself shrivel up inside my skin.

All I could hear were those useless newscasters in my ears, warning me to hide, duck, and take cover. Goodnight and good luck. Good thing I didn't care.

Peering at a tsunami wave of destruction through a tiny crack in his dam.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

I waited until the next morning to make my way between our houses, shuffling on the green grass in my bare feet. The sun was high and hot. It was already over eighty degrees, and the man on the transistor said it would get to a record high of ninety, if not over. I thought of Bella, realizing I was going barefoot as much as she was, but after the weight of military boots, having nothing— not even socks—made me feel like I was floating on air. Something maybe I hoped would rub off on my inner self.

On my approach, I eyed the house. All the windows were yawning on the old thing. All its eyes open with lace curtains fluttering limply out of the windows, picking up what little breeze there was crossing through the halls and rooms. It was almost… pleasant to look at.

Knocking once, twice, making the door flap, I called with a tentative voice through the screen when I heard no sound of her or the clip of hooves. "Bella?"

No answer returned to me, so I turned to go, regretful I wouldn't be able to get out my apology before too much time passed, and it would just be an awkward gesture. I stood on the front porch, trying to see if she was hidden in her garden, and I missed her, or maybe at the stream, bathing again. That second thought made me clear my throat, the memory of her body, lithe and supple, as the stream supplied a peaceful backdrop. It wasn't something I wanted to relate to her, especially since I had now seen how beautiful she was up close and had almost lost control when she'd practically pressed herself up against me.

The sound of a crash from inside made me jump to the door and pull it open instantly, crossing the kitchen, and searching the downstairs rooms for signs of something broken, most likely Bella bloodying her hand in a second clumsy accident.

"Bella?" I called again, up the stairs this time, my mind imagining worse things like slipping on slick bathroom floors or falling out of flimsy second floor windows. "Bella, I heard a crash. Are you all right?"

My feet began to climb, a bit of worry in them as I heard a second crash. Panicked, my feet jumped up two at a time and raced to the landing where I started looking into each room, anticipating seeing her body lifeless on the ground. Images of bodies and blood and chaos made me blink my one eye rapidly, but I kept searching the dusty rooms until I found what I was looking for.

Two crystal vases were shattered on the floor of the farthest bedroom, water seeping through the knotholes in the wood and yellow daisies sprawled out and bent. I stepped slowly over them and felt the stronger breeze from this side of the house. Relieved Bella wasn't involved, I picked up the pieces and collected them in their broken bases, leaving the daisies propped up on the sill.

After mopping up the water with a towel from the bathroom, I felt the floor to make sure I'd gotten everything. As I did, I took a wider look around the room, half-expecting it to be covered in a dust blanket much like my second, unused bedroom.

But this room was filled with life. Great big, beautiful life.

Massive, hand-painted murals graced two walls: fluffy pink flowers blooming against the greenest leaves and darkest bark of a forest of trees. An antique birdcage jutted from the wall to look like it was perched on a branch, filled with fairy lights that extended out the side and trailed the way up the inside of a thin wisp of a canopy that hung from the ceiling and crowned the four poster bed underneath.

I turned in a circle, mesmerized by how… girly it was, with pink quilts laying on a bench at the foot and fluffy pillows strewn next to an oversized, oval mirror with more fairy lights wrapped around the top, intertwined with scarves and bits of lace.

Feeling monstrous in the overly feminine room, I realized I was violating her privacy much as she had mine and made my way out, only to have a group of books—large, voluminous books—catch my eye. It wasn't the pile that made me stop; it was the subject matter.

She had at least twenty-five coffee table books neatly stacked in a white bookcase, some on their side, some being used as a stage for knickknacks, and some facing forward to show off their covers.

Nepal. Bangladesh. Africa. The Great Pyramids. Thailand.

I knew without looking at titles where each photo was taken as I knew some of the people behind the lens responsible for their beauty. My fingers touched the shiny paper covering one of them, and I felt a knife in my gut, much like the one I felt yesterday in my attic, of dreams and me and landscapes long gone. But I also felt curiosity and maybe a bit of sadness for Bella. I was pretty sure she'd never been to these places but to know she was interested—possibly dreamed of them—made me mourn the fact that she'd been stuck here. Her room made sense, its forests and fairy lands taking her from the fields and blankness of home.

Flashes of her in other places flew before me, and I could see her in my mind dressed in a ruby-gilded sari on top of an elephant or maybe in khaki holding a koala. She'd be lovely floating in a rice boat down the Mekong Delta, a Non La sitting atop her head at a quirky angle as her hand rippled the water while it skimmed the surface.

Opening the front cover of a book about Cuba, I envisioned a photograph of Bella sipping a Cubanito at one of the outdoor coffee stalls in Havana, legs elegantly crossed, as she perched on a stool, then I blinked and saw myself sitting next to her.

I slammed the book closed like it bit me.

Leaving her room before it sucked me in, the floorboards creaked and my stomach rolled. Seeing those books after looking at all my photographs hit me hard, making me feel sick and sweaty. Stopping to brace my hands on my knees, I closed my eye and let out a breath.

I chose to settle here. Chose to find the most boring place on earth and live out the rest of my life planting my feet so deep in soil, I'd begin to sprout. I couldn't let myself go down this slippery slope, remembering what life was like before. Before, when I did it for me, until that wasn't enough.

There was no going back. Innocence was lost, and years of decay had made me rot inside. How could I shoot pretty images when I knew how much black was out there? When I knew exactly what my camera could capture?

Against my will, I let my deepest fear see a swatch of light I hadn't given it freedom to do since I'd received and accepted this small, inadequate punishment for my sins. I fiddled with my eye patch as I made my way to her stairs.

Even if I found something worthy, would my mangled eye allow me the joy of being able to shoot it? Or would it mock me and justify all I'd done by not being able to see the beauty before me?

Would I be a surgeon who has lost feeling in his scalpel hand?

Through the open second-story window in front of me, I saw the field flutter and the movement of a brunette head over the grasses. I thought to call out to her, but I ran down the stairs instead, not wanting her to find me in her house. I wouldn't be able to handle her yelling at me as I had done to her the day before, for the same exact offense.

When I burst out the screen door to make my way towards her, it took me a minute to process what was in front of me. There she was, deer at her side, walking towards me without a stitch on, save for a scant scrap of underwear that barely qualified. Hair covered one breast over her left shoulder, but the rest of her was white and bright, glowing in the sunshine pouring down on her. I glimpsed yellow fabric in her hand before I looked down instinctively, hoping she hadn't caught me ogling as my eye raked down her body.

As I was shuffling and staring at my bare feet, the grass went from listless sound to quick rustling, and suddenly, she was there, bounding towards me. Too quickly, she was right in front of me, jumping up. My arms caught her and wrapped around, her body fitting perfectly against mine.

She placed her fingers on my mouth as I opened it to speak. "I'm sorry," she sighed, breathless and wild.

 _She_ was apologizing to _me_? That was all wrong, but before I could correct her, her fingers slipped up over my cheek, along my nose, and dusted the eyebrow just above my good eye, her palm falling flat against it, blocking all sight.

"I'm sorry," she repeated, the word ending just as her lips touched mine. They were still at first, just a soft pressure, and I inhaled whatever soap she'd used deep into my lungs. Very gently, she ended that kiss but began another, her mouth opening slightly as her head tilted just the faintest bit to the right. It was tentative but not unsure. My grip on her tightened as her legs squeezed back. Her smooth skin was damp and clean under my palms, and they kneaded the skin of her back, before slipping steadily down to support her and brace her against me.

She felt good. Like summer and memories of popsicles melting down your hand. She was hot under my fingers like sand on an orange Australian beach. She tasted like ponds and streams and creeks with butterflies buzzing lazily in the distance, and I drank from her like I'd been lying in the desert for days, full of thirst.

Maybe it was my own apology, letting her kiss me like that without telling her to stop, without pushing her away. But maybe it wasn't.

My hand went to her hair and tangled itself in its dampness, my fingers clutching her neck and moving her head the way I wanted. She felt like a fairy doll, so light and small in my strength, but when I tried to loosen my hold, she clamped herself tighter around me. I knew that if I let go of her completely, she'd stay right where she was, climbing me like a tree. Like a girl being pulled by the wind and clinging to life.

I found myself clinging right back.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

As quickly as it began, as heavy as the start had been—a sudden squall of curiosity lust— it ended in a soft, slow roll that lapped its last breath against the sand at the edge of a very big ocean. Languid and slippery. Wrists and lips and the soft spots beneath ears. Kisses whispering out across shoulders and up necks, grass beneath heads and knees and palms. I pulled the yellow dress back over my head and we sprawled in the grass, the fawn plopping down beside us, munching chickweed and sneezing dandelion pollen, nose dusted gold.

"You given that thing a name, yet?"

"No. Nothing is sticking."

The fawn sneezed again, and Edward reached out to brush her nose clean, wiping his fingers on his pants.

I pulled a little green tin out from the pocket of my dress. I'd found it shoved in the back of a vanity drawer last night. The lid was stamped with an old image of Peter Rabbit, a bit rusted around the edges. The paint was flaking off, silver metal beneath it, and the sight of it had given me such a surge of remorse I almost fell over. That was only the first time I cried last night.

"Found this." I handed it to him, listening to him open the lid, the scent perfuming the air around us. Two decent looking bits of weed, some papers, a lighter. I wondered what he'd think.

His eyebrows perked. "Have you ever smoked before?" he asked.

"Sure. A lot, actually. With my mom." I took the tin from him, sitting up and getting to work, crumbling and rolling and licking, studiously ignoring him. He watched me do it, blatantly watched, and every time his mouth so much as moved, I imagined it on another part of my body.

"Your mom?" He had a right to sound skeptical—who smoked weed with their mother—but I shrugged, flicking at the lighter.

"It helped. Kept her head on tighter. Straighter. That's how I got so good." I held up the perfect little joint, and he grinned at me. A real honest, easy one.

"Maybe too good," he chuckled. He let me take the first hit, an inhale/exhale sigh. He studied my face for a long time, his eye scanning me, until his gaze finally landed on ground zero.

The bruise he'd left on my arm was going periwinkle and eggplant.

His face hardened, and he reached for me quickly, too fast, startling both of us. He lurched to a halt, hand in midair, before he heaved a deep breath and met my eyes, just as he put his fingers to my elbow. He eyed my bicep like I had some kind of jungle disease, a mixture of horror and fascination on his face. When the realization dawned, a slow build of light behind his eye, he dropped my arm as though it had burned him and hurled himself away from me. He sat in the grass, his back angled toward me, hunched over something in his chest.

"Fuck," he groaned. "I'm sorry. I'm just—"

"My arm is ok," I said. He wasn't ok, and the rough hands that gave me the bruise weren't ok, and I wasn't ok, either. But my arm was. "I shouldn't have gone up there; I'm sorry. I blame the deer." I poked at his back and held out the joint, feeling more than seeing him take it from my fingers.

"Sure." He rolled his eye at me and made a choking sound. "It's easier to blame someone else, isn't it?"

"It's the truth; I was trying to chase her down."

He looked down at the joint in his fingers, shaking his head. "I _am_ sorry. No one should touch you like that."

There was a part of me that wanted desperately to feel his touch again, another part that wanted to touch _him_ , but I didn't know how he would react on the heels of those bruises. Now that I knew what he felt like, I wanted more. The calluses on his hands and his back tensed up, breath wanting, heart thumping. There was a place below his jaw that smelled of wood and lemons. I knew how his fingers dug in and how his breath came out hard and soft all at once, and I wanted more.

"I'm sorry I touched your camera," I said, wringing my fingers together instead. "It looks expensive."

"It is." He took a drag and exhaled a halo of smoke around his head, gazing off toward his house as though the camera was singing to him from way up in his attic. Sneaking out through the clapboards and the shingles and the corners of its cardboard box. Through its black, padded casket. A hum only he could hear.

"Your photos, they're—"

"Horrific," he said, taking another hard drag off the joint.

"Not all." I shook my head. "Well, some of them are. But the others are… they're… "

"Memories," he stated flatly, smoke between his lips. "Most of them best forgotten."

"No." My own memories were tugging on my heartstrings from the floor of my bedroom, those books that hid the world between their pages, places so unreal I spent hours awestruck by the raw wonder of the earth I lived on. "The pretty ones are really something, but the ugly ones are important. Vital, maybe. The world needs to see them."

He almost laughed out loud but caught it back, sounding strangled. "The world needs far more of the pretty shit." He held the joint out toward me, still without looking at my face, shaking his head.

"Maybe. But that doesn't mean the ugly stuff is worth less."

"You'd be amazed what some people will pay for gore."

"Humans can be really terrible." I took a deep breath and flopped back into the grass, my mother pounding around in my head and drowning out all of the destruction in Edward's attic. She was his kind of disaster, my mother. One that left a mark. Full scale annihilation, with subtle, poetic omens of the end lurking in every corner. The ghost garden and the crumbling house and the baby doll broken in the corner. The stains in the carpet and in the air, the house heavy with the weight of her.

"I liked the one of the pink beach," I sighed.

I pulled myself there with another kiss of that joint, digging my toes into the rose-tinted sand of that shoreline, bright sun and salt wind. I'd seen a picture of it before, that pink beach, but Edward's image of it was different somehow. Honest and unassuming, taken on a bland, sunny day but so full of nuance and depth. An ache, something like longing, sprouted in my guts, curling around the base of my stomach.

Oh, to be there. Anywhere but here.

"Komodo, Indonesia," he said, taking the joint from my fingers. He slumped back onto his elbow beside me, face to the sky, looking for all the world as though his tension was unraveling, knots in his muscles unclenching, grip of his jaw loosening. "Home of the living, breathing dragons."

"And the flowers? On the mountain?" My heart whisked away to a yellow-petaled alpine. The faint bite of winter that never really left: the still, clean air, and the sun bearing down on you from just an arm's length away.

"The yellow ones? Near Lake Geneva. The Globe flower, not actually a rose, but still pretty." He said that at the same time as he looked at me, and I felt just like that flower. Not a rose but still pretty.

"The harbor? The one with the lighthouse and the tide gone out?" I asked.

"Washington. Bellingham. Late fall. The harbormaster let me get on an anchored buoy to get that shot."

"You're really very good at it."

He didn't answer, just stared off at the clouds for a moment, the sunshine burning his hair

before he tapped a single fingertip to the eyepatch three times, tap tap tap.

"I was. And then I got very, very bad at it."

* * *

I stopped in front of the mirror in the back hallway, the one right inside the door. The girl staring back at me was something wild and windblown and joint-high, kissed silly-stupid, with a strange light behind her skin. Prairie rose cheeks and bluebell eyes and the soft browns that belong only on tree bark and in deep dark soil and rocks hewn from the very center of the earth. I had a river in me, a primordial forest. I looked older than the oldest mountains. Looked prehistoric and worn down by time and gravity and rain.

I looked just like her.

Edward was painting his house. I didn't trust the ladder a single bit, but he said it was solid, and he wanted to get the job done before the next round of storms hit. He left me in our field after a flurry of four kisses, each harder than the last, loping off through the grass toward his half-naked house. I picked myself up and stood in front of the mirror for six minutes before I fled the house.

I couldn't do it. Couldn't stand to be confined in there, not now. The pink beaches and the flowered mountains were still echoing in my ears.

We ended up in the garden all afternoon, the fawn and I.

It took an hour to pick through the spring strawberry patches, and the first of the blackberries were no better. I gouged and spiked myself into a prickly mess, digging through the bramble, and searching for canaries in a thorny goldmine. I picked the first sprigs of mint and soft green prairie onions. I found a patch of bittersweet and stumbled across a cache of eggs from the flock of chickens that had escaped the Henry's place a few years back. They now roamed the grasslands, often congregating in the garden for refuge. There was a small hole they ducked through in the back corner, a wrench in the wire fencing. It seemed like an even trade-off, the fenced-in protection for a small fee.

By the time I'd dug through the last of the garden, it was dusk.

I went to Edward's with everything I had to give. I had berries and herbs from the overgrown garden. Six eggs, all sage and cream and pale blue. I had half of a bottle of whiskey from underneath the sink. I had a bruise in the shape of a boomerang on my arm. I had a fawn who liked licking my knees and stepping on toes.

I had a heart like a hand grenade. A head like a swarm of bees.

It wasn't much, but it was something.

I called his name through the open door, echoing down the hallway. His head appeared in the far- off doorway, ushering me in with a swing of his chin and a half-smile cracked across his face. I nudged inside, crawling along the invisible pull that kept tugging me toward him.

I stalled just inside the kitchen. The light was fading against the walls, and the air was warm, with something that smelled delicious simmering in a pot on the stove. He was chopping an onion, the sting reaching my eyes as they landed on the box.

 _That_ box.

Sitting on the kitchen table, unassuming as a nuclear bomb.

I gulped and stared at him, fingernails digging into the basket in my arms. He said nothing, just tilted his head toward the table and arched a big eyebrow at me like I should be able to read his mind. I stepped closer, heart hammering.

"I brought whiskey. And strawberries," I stammered, staring at the box again. My arm throbbed, and I didn't dare take my hands off the basket, lest I do something stupid. Like touch that camera. Or him.

He set down his knife and stepped toward me, taking the basket from my vise grip. His eye found mine and then the box, his mouth puckering before he glanced back to me.

I shook my head "You don't have—"

"Open it."

He retreated to the counter again as I took a deep breath and pulled the box closer. My fingers brushed the now-closed zipper on that big scary case, a thrill of fear burning the ridges of my fingerprints.

"Not that one," he said, flat and stern, and I snatched my fingers away. I chose one of the several smaller bags beside the big heavy case of doom, sitting down to open it in my lap.

It was small, simple, a little dinged-up around the edges, and old.

"Open it up. The lever on the side."

I found the tiny arm and flicked it up, the entire back of the camera popping open. Edward talked me through loading a roll of film as he sliced strawberries. I fumbled along after his instructions, finally snapping the back of the camera in place, the gears grinding soft and even as the film rolled.

I held the camera up to my face, Edward in the little box of light before me. The tiny vision of him standing at the counter, the last ray of sun slicing across his chest, the shadows embracing his back.

"Next?"

"Well…" Edward shrugged, eye on his knife, stained red with strawberries. "Point and shoot."

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

When I was eight years old, my father brought home a mysterious box. Emmett and I gathered around, stepping on his toes and squishing his knees, waiting for him to open it up. I remember the smell of pot roast, and my mother chastising lightly. A "what did you do?" that was more curious than reprimanding as she joined us in watching the contents we couldn't see until they would be revealed.

I imagined that big symphony kind of music starting in expectation as he lifted the flaps, and my stomach rolled in disappointment when he pulled out another box. I looked closer and saw this one had a picture on it, the image of a camera.

"It's a Nikon," he said proudly, like we should know what that meant.

"It's only a camera," Emmett pouted, hoping for the new video game system his best friend had just gotten.

"Only a camera?" My father's beard was starting to get too scraggly, but you could still see his smile behind the fur. "This isn't just any camera; it's a work of art. An F90x." What he said made no sense, but I gasped anyway, caught up in the old man's enthusiasm.

"And just what are you going to do with this thing?" my mother asked, peering inside the second box when he opened it up.

"We're going to the cabin this summer—think of all the great shots I'll get there." His eyes widened as he took the black machine from the styrofoam packing.

"What's wrong with the one we have?"

I remember his face exactly, the way he looked at her, and I mimicked the look right along with him, my eyebrows narrowing and lips pursing. "Esme, no one uses a Rollei anymore."

"Well, excuse me. I'll just go finish dinner while you boys play with your new toy." She swished away, and my dad reached out to hit her on the behind, making her yelp and run off.

Emmett got bored after a few minutes and wandered away, but I watched carefully as he flicked some buttons, cranked a dial, and turned a wheel in front. He pulled out the instruction book and handed it to me to hold open for him. "You get it, Edward. You understand that sometimes a man needs to upgrade." I nodded as he opened the back and took a roll of film out of a black plastic canister. It didn't look like the film cartridge from the instamatic; it looked _important_.

"We'll learn how to use this together, Edward. Your brother doesn't know how to be careful, but you do. It'll be our thing." He winked at me, and I smiled so big, knowing I'd have a secret from Emmett, a secret from Mom—something that Dad and I could share and have undercover meetings about.

"You ready?" The look on his face when he closed that door with a little click and powered it on, the gears inside whirring and locking in place, was like when you have birthday cake for breakfast or find that elusive baseball card. It was awe, anticipation, and the feeling of just knowing that this moment—this _thing_ —was going to be more exciting than anything else that day or maybe even that century.

It was a feeling I never forgot and watching Bella handle my father's prized possession in my crummy kitchen while corn boiled and strawberries were sliced, I felt it again.

* * *

"Turn your aperture down, that dial in front with the numbers, yeah. Put it to 5.6." Bella looked at the front of the camera and moved the dial carefully.

"Why this setting?"

"It's getting darker out, not as much light. You want a wider opening, or aperture. Plus, the deer will be in focus, but the fields behind her will be softly blurred," I explained easily but hoped she understood. I'd never taught anyone to use my camera before, and I wasn't sure how technical to get.

She raised the camera to her eye, and I could see her arms shaking a bit. The fields in front of us swayed with the comfortable early evening breeze, and the deer blinked lazily as it looked ready to lay down for a nap. Strawberries still lined her lips, and every once in awhile, her tongue would remember and peek out to get the last little bit.

"Is it too heavy for you?" I thought of the bruise I left and hoped that wasn't the reason for the shaking. My stomach knotted, the chicken and corn threatening to return.

She pressed the shutter, making it click, and pulled the camera from her eye. "No, I'm just nervous. This camera is important to you. But I want to know more."

"Sit down, then, and brace your elbows on your knees. We'll practice some close-ups of the deer that has yet to be named." We sat in the same place we seemed to be drawn to, between our houses. The place I discovered her, mad and hell-bent to be angry she existed, and now the place where we'd formed some sort of alliance this afternoon.

"You have to change your focus now that you've moved." She nodded, pushing her hair back over her shoulder and out of the way, before moving the camera back to her eye. I watched her take a few shots, adjust the lens, and take a few more.

My mouth was slightly dry, and my head was throbbing a bit. Watching Bella handle my father's Nikon was surreal, and I must've still been high to have brought the thing down in the first place. I rubbed my slightly clammy hands on my jeans and told myself that this wasn't a big deal. I wasn't taking the pictures. I wasn't the one focusing on a subject, making sure the lighting was correct, making sure the ISO and shutter speed were exactly how I wanted them.

I was okay as long as it wasn't me that held it in my hands.

"What's your favorite picture you've ever taken?" Bella's voice pierced through my cobwebs, and I answered quickly, surprising us both.

"My parents' twenty-fifth wedding anniversary."

"Not a landscape?"

"It was an unplanned moment. My parents were dancing, and my father thought he was Fred Astaire. He twirled her around, and I hadn't adjusted the shutter speed. When I got the picture developed, I loved the way her dress blurred, and the lights around them looked like shooting stars."

"Sounds pretty."

I laughed. "It is—it's a perfectly good picture of two people in love. What makes it my favorite is I'd captured my brother behind them, his pants down and mooning the camera, his proud face beaming from over his shoulder. It pretty much sums up my whole life."

"He sounds like a riot."

"He was." It slipped out before I could stop it, the words not as bitter on my tongue as they'd been before. The memory was still a good one, but it's the first time a memory hadn't backfired on me and detonated inside, causing gaping flesh wounds that burned and festered. Bella looked at me but didn't say anything more, turning back to the camera to fiddle with the strap around her neck.

"I want to take a picture of my house."

"You want to get closer?" I began to get up, but she stopped me with a hand on my leg.

"No, from here. It's safer from here." She turned on her butt, so that she faced the decrepit structure, looming high in the sky and painted dusk-gold. "Is it too dark this far away?" She looked scared, nervous, like she was violating someone's privacy. I thought about the one photo I'd seen in her house, of her mother with the baby—that was maybe a doll—and a little Bella, with a nervous smile on her face. I wondered who took that picture and why they didn't notice all the things that were wrong.

With a sudden urge to protect her, I moved so that I sat behind her, my legs on either side cradling her body against me. Her hair smelled like flowery soap, as I rested my chin on her shoulder and pushed my head against hers so that she was looking up. "Where's the light coming from?" I said, my voice throaty, trying to be quiet and gentle.

Her cheek pressed to mine. "From behind us. It's low."

"So it's aimed towards your subject—that's good." My hands felt the chill in her legs, and I placed both palms against her thighs, right under where the hem of her dress fell. "Adjust the aperture again; we want it open as much as possible."

With shaky hands, she fumbled with the dial. "Higher number or lower?"

"To the left, 2.8. Here." My hands came up on either side of her, adjusting the dial to the right setting. She was soft in my arms, and I thought of my bicep pressing into her bruise, but she didn't move away, so neither did I.

She raised the camera to her eye and let out a breath, elbows propped on my arms that were now tightly around her stomach, anchoring her to me and the field. "Now, point and shoot. I won't let it bite you." I felt her nod slightly, and just as her finger began to depress the shutter button, my mouth found her neck and pressed itself against her. I could feel her pulse quicken, so I did it again, her fingers taking picture after picture as my lips tried to calm whatever demons she saw through the lens.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

One camera, one dusky field, one haunted house.

One finger on the button.

Two lips.

Three hot, wet, bone-aching kisses to my neck.

I took four shots of the house, five, six, before his fingers found my sides again, a grip on me that pulled us closer, his hands roaming up my chest. He felt heavy and full of something urgent leaning over me, a weight that I'd be only too happy to drown under.

He took his sweet time doing me in.

His mouth moved slow, and his hands moved slower—a full body exploration of callused fingers against the skin of my legs, my arms, and my neck. Hitching the hem of my dress around his wrists, fumbling fingers, tongue tracing the curve of my shoulder. He slipped a firm, steady hand around my breast, breathing fast and fire-hot down my neck. He was all heavy exhales and groans, his mouth falling open against my neck and his gaze glazing over.

I gave in.

Let my hands roam, tracing shrapnel wounds like I was blind, and he was Braille. His scars and his suntan, the feel of him all over me, warping everything sideways. He pushed the last of the dress off my shoulders and collapsed back into the grass, looking me over with his eye squinted, and his mouth pulled up at one corner. He was flushed, maybe the sun, but probably me some too.

"Now that's a sight to see." The words came out sly, sexy, something soft and sweet that had been rubbed all over, raw as sandpaper. I glanced at the camera lying in the grass beside his head and I picked it up, shooting fast, catching him unaware. Taking aim and sight for a split moment before snapping a picture of him, all haloed in little white flowers and soft green grass.

"Take a picture of me."

"I—" His face dropped, that smile gone in a heartbeat, the light draining away.

"Please."

I swallowed down my stomach, feeling the ghost memory of his shaking hands resting over mine to touch the camera, teaching me how to use it. The faint trace of his soul caught up somewhere in the gears, tucked too deep inside to find, stuck too tight to pull free. The long, distant look he gave the camera, staring at the black box in my hands, suddenly so far away.

There was fear there, and something so sad it made my guts churn, but there was a also a flicker of starvation, a bloody, desperate sort of hunger.

I held the camera out, knowing full well I was asking him for something deeper than trust.

Faith, maybe.

He took the camera from me, wincing as though it burned, but he didn't touch it to his face. Barely held it up at all—just found the button and snapped, a shot taken level with my breasts, my open-mouthed shock probably captured at the top of the frame. He swapped hands and held the thing out at another angle, over to the right, and snapped again. I barely caught sight of the lens, now held high above my head, before he snapped once more and darted off again, getting me way off from the left.

I tried to grapple for the camera, but some battles are better lost. He pinned me to his chest and held the camera out with one of those long, long arms. As he grinned at me, it was obvious he was enjoying my struggle. I gave up when I was breathless, collapsing on top of him just to breathe for a minute. His hand found my thigh and squeezed it gently as his breathing slowed alongside mine.

When I'd found some air and lifted my face, his eye was closed. I hitched myself up an inch higher, his hands coming hard and fast to my backside, a groan stuck somewhere deep in his throat. His hips rolled beneath me, and he opened his eye, several thousand springtimes caught there in green and brown and gold. Dark lashes, heavy brows, a few tiny wrinkles there at the corner.

I traced a finger along the edge of the eyepatch, down the side of his nose, and out across his cheek, all smooth except for a lump of scar tissue perched high on his cheekbone.

He didn't flinch.

"A real picture," I whispered. "A good one."

"Those were real pictures."

"Not that way."

He stared at me for a long time, eyelids fluttering and his brows knitting together. He perched on an elbow beneath me, eye caught somewhere across the grass.

"Go get her."

The fawn came bounding across the grass, meeting me in a patch of clover a few feet away from Edward. The flower necklace I'd made her earlier was trailing on the ground, and her nose was covered in fine gold pollen, mouth stained with violets. I righted a few blooms in the chain and plopped it all on my head, snuggling the fawn close. She smelled a lot better after that bath, her fur shiny and smooth. I got a full face lick and an affectionate head butt to the chin, velvet ears tickling my neck, plush lips eating handfuls of clover from me.

A familiar burn danced its way up my arms.

Edward was watching us, still propped on that elbow, the camera held limp on his stomach, fingers still itching to get away from it. His face was solemn and thoughtful, eye wide, and jaw loose for once. He looked so far away. Looked like the last hazy glow of sunshine before the sky goes to sleep at night. Like a pool of water at the edge of a great rolling river, caught in a never-ending circle on itself.

Like a single cloud in a big empty sky.

The camera snapped.

I blinked in surprise. "You don't even _look_ ," I accused, glaring at the camera now propped on his chest. Edward shook his head, tilting it to the side to squint at me through the sunshine.

"Sometimes, it's better to just feel it." His eye dropped off my face, and his bottom lip snuck between his teeth. I glanced down, the limp shoulder of my dress hanging forgotten around my elbow, practically naked from the waist up. I reached for the sleeve, but a sound in Edward's throat stopped me.

"Don't." He shook his head at me and snapped another shot.

* * *

Edward parked the truck in front of the hardware store and handed me a paper bag, my film canisters rattling around inside.

I took fifteen rolls of film in one week. Edward just laughed and teased me about my obsessive trigger finger eating up film for fun, but I couldn't stop myself. It started small—the clover poking out of the dirt and close-ups of peeling paint. The tiny blue flowers that were starting to carpet the hills to the north, fields of blossoms no bigger than a penny turning the whole earth into sky. The way the fawn's eyelashes laid, thick and curling over its cheek.

We'd driven to Lake Scott to take pictures of the birds that peppered the shorelines, a white snowfall summer of feathers, and he kissed me in the sand. Drove up toward Oberlin, where the trees grew stunted and sideways from the relentless wind. We spent hours with the fawn at the stream, the sunlight kissing the grass through the trees, stealing a few of them ourselves. Photos of lily pads and tiny green frogs and the way the moss crawled over the rocks. Photos of the watercress that sprouted in the shallows. The sunlight and the stars and the fawn.

Photos of Edward.

Lots of Edward.

I went home every night, tiptoeing the edge of frustration and burning way too hot, ripping my clothes off the moment I hit the porch and prowling my house all night long in torment. I got myself off with the thought of his mouth, those lips, and the simple friction of my thighs pressed hard together enough to send me tumbling right through my mattress—a full body plummet that had me curling my toes and reaching out for something solid to hold on to. Coming up for air felt like crawling out of an asteroid crater, emerging from depths, blinking in some brilliant new sunlight. I did it again twice that night, using him in deviant ways, and then once more in the one way that I knew would be my undoing.

His face between my thighs, hands beneath my hips, all stubble and wet and sucking and—

I wanted him.

Wanted him badly enough to leap across the truck seat and plant myself in his lap, rub every aching bit of me over every aching inch of him.

The two old men parked chins to the concrete outside the hardware store were all that stopped me.

"I'll be in here." His head tilted toward the door and those busybodies gaping at us from their chessboard out front. I glared at them, so their gazes shifted awkwardly back to their game, then I looked back to Edward.

"Ignore _everyone_ ," I said.

He winked at me. "You got it." He loped out of the truck, nodding curtly to the men as he strode inside. I shuffled out of the truck and sped off toward Sparrow's, flinging myself inside and slamming the door behind me.

"Who's there?"

"It's me," I called.

She came around the corner like a lightning strike, arms around my waist, nearly catching me off my feet. Sparrow hugged me surprisingly hard for someone so small, and she nuzzled her wrinkly face into my chest a few times before smiling up at me with her deep obsidian eyes.

I tried to push Edward away. Tried to forget his face. The stretch of his skin, palms, lips. That meadow. The film in the paper bag. The bruise on my arm. The gash on my leg. The state of my hair. The way my heart was hammering and my mind kept flitting back to him, despite how hard I tried to push him aside. He was right there, a specter between me and Sparrow, in all his shattered glory.

She always said I had a "see-through" face.

"You're different," she accused. She grabbed me by the chin, trying to get a look at my eyes. I shrugged her off before she could really make contact, pulling out of her grip on my face.

"Get off, Auntie," I whined. "I need more soap."

She narrowed her eyes at me, only now wiping her hands on her dishtowel. I could feel her damp handprints soaked through the fabric of my shorts.

"Jasper tells me you have a fawn."

"Jasper talks too much." I wanted to scream, but I walked to the bookshelves instead, picking a book at random.

"Don't you go feeding that thing nothing but strawberries," she scolded, a finger wagging in my direction. My face flamed. That was exactly what I had been doing. That and clover.

I shrugged.

Sparrow sighed, shaking her head as she trudged away and started rummaging through drawers, clinking bottles, and grinding something pungent and spicy in a bowl. I sat in the squashy chair by the window and drank in a beautiful book about the Saharan grasslands: watery wet seasons and blistering heat, giraffes puncturing a clear blue sky, elephants trudging across a blood red sunset. A spangle of lions. A lone, stunted tree in the middle of a vast, empty nothing.

Sparrow tapped my shoulder. When I pulled myself back to reality, she handed me a bottle of something creamy white and smelling of juniper.

"What's this for?"

"Fleas."

I gaped at her. "I don't have fleas."

"Not _you_ ," she snorted. "The fawn."

"She doesn't have fleas either."

"She will." Sparrow nodded her head decisively.

"Ok, fine, and what's this?" I held up the tub of something that reeked of lemon and looked as though it had finely ground sand dumped into it, gritty and thick. Sparrow winked at me.

"My special scouring soap. Good for the bad kind of dirt. Takes off paint." She winked at me.

She knew. She knew about Edward. I scowled. "If you say the name 'Jasper,' I'm going to kick him in the mouth the next time I see him. Why can't he just mind his own business?"

"Jasper's own business is too sad for him to live with, so he uses everyone else's to distract himself."

"Mine especially. And Edward's, it seems."

"Mrs. Cope says he has a very 'nice' face." Sparrow made little air quotes around 'nice' as though nice actually meant handsome. Damn Mrs. Cope and her fat mouth, but she was right.

"He does." I blushed. "Have a nice face."

"He is the difference," she muttered, reaching out and put her palm flat against my forehead, whispering her customary blessing on my journey away from her, one that would always come back around again. As I turned to go, setting the book down on the chair, Sparrow stopped me.

"Take it. No one has looked at it in years. Enjoy it, Awentia."

"Thank you, Auntie." I kissed her forehead and waved at her from the sidewalk.

I stopped in at the post office down the street and almost mailed the film off to some place in Topeka, expedited overnight because I was so excited to see what I had done. Almost. But the thought of what was likely on those photos, the unbuttoned dress, the naked skin beneath it... I couldn't do it. I tucked the bag under my arm and took the back way to the hardware store, bypassing the gossipmongers out front, a bell tolling my entrance.

He was leaning against a counter, Sam propped on the other side, their heads tucked together over something that had them both grinning. Edward looked relaxed, his knees bent and his shoulders loose, the tension seeping out of him in a moment of distraction. I walked up and stood beside him, maybe too close, but I didn't care. Sam barely glanced at the inch of space between us, ignoring it as though it meant nothing, and nodded hello to me with an easy smile.

"Bella. You're a sight for sore eyes."

"Hi, Sam." I smiled.

Edward was eyeing the paper bag in my arms, the vise grip I still had on it. He took it from me, giving it an experimental shake, the telltale rattle giving me away. He set the bag on the counter, eyeing it for a moment before looking back at me. His eyebrows curled low in confusion.

"You didn't send it off?"

"I—couldn't," I stammered, suddenly incapable of explaining my reluctance after a week of pestering him to teach me more and more and more. I'd begged to come to town for this errand alone; I didn't even really need any soap. I was almost scared to see them, and I didn't want anyone else to see them before I did. Including the people at a mini-mart in Topeka.

Edward's hand touched my shoulder, and I looked up at him, shrugging because I didn't have words to describe the way you could want something so bad it ached, but at the same time, not want it at all. He looked at me hard for a long moment before his eye drifted back to Sam, sly and conspiratorial.

"You got any tarps back there?"

Sam glanced toward the back room door as though he was mentally scanning the shelves in his mind. "Yep." He nodded momentarily. "A couple, probably."

"Or better yet, got any velvet?"

"If you want velvet, gotta go see Claudine down at the dress shop." Sam narrowed his eyes at Edward. "What's all that for?"

Edward reached into the bag and held up one of my film canisters. A look of recognition dawned on Sam's face, then another nod and a smile. Sam went off and returned with a pile of thick black tarps, handing it all off to us with a chuckle, calling Edward "too ambitious".

"What are you doing?" I asked, trailing Edward out the door. He dropped his load into the bed of the truck and turned back to me, head cocked to see me better.

"We're gonna build a darkroom."

"A darkroom?"

"Don't you wanna see what's on those things?" He knocked the paper bag in my hand. I nodded, hesitant and slow, and he smiled at me, looking damn near excited. "Let's find out."

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	22. Chapter 22

**Hey everyone!**

 **We just wanted to let you guys know that we are taking a little posting break next week to enjoy some summer fun! Don't worry, we will be back on schedule next Monday, August 20. Thanks for understanding, and we look forward to talking with you all again! See you in a week!**

 **XO, Bee and Blue**

* * *

 **Chapter 22**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

Dust, rust, scrapes, and bruises. Dead mice, cobwebs, and articles unknown. A week and a half later, the shed had been transformed, and the finishing touches almost put in place.

My finger traced the wood filler, pushing into the cracks and lines of the aged boards. Even though it leaned a little to the left, the shed wasn't in bad condition, not really. The old man took pride in the work he'd done in here, and amidst the junk now out on the gravel driveway, I found some good power tools Bella told me he'd used for wood crafting. Furniture, to be exact. I wondered what in the house might've been handmade.

His hobby created the perfect space for our darkroom; power had been hooked up, and plumbing from the house had been connected. Once I'd cleared the knickknacks and rusted memories, the shed revealed a big, sturdy workbench in the back, and that's where Bella sat now, watching me.

Her bare legs swung in time with the music coming from the radio, my too-big gas station flip flops on her feet to ward off stray splinters and rusty nails that might have lingered after the third sweep out. "I guess if we're going to be spending a lot of time in here, I should upgrade the stereo system."

When I glanced at her, she shrugged. "I dunno—I like it. Reminds me of him."

Finally finished sealing the last of the gaps, I stood, my knees creaking a little from crouching so long. "You were close?"

"We didn't share blood, but he was my grandpa."

"Very close, then."

She shrugged and glanced out the door, my house perched proud in its bright colors just there through the sunshine. "They were always here. Always close. I loved them."

"They teach you things?"

"Loads. She was a great cook. And he could fix anything."

I cleared my throat, unsure I wanted to bring up something that might damage the levity between us. "Mind me asking what happened to them?"

"She had a stroke. Maybe seven years ago, by now. He went with her to the nursing home." She paused, a sigh filling up her chest before she spoke again. "He had to, you know? They just went together. Like a puzzle."

I frowned a little, wanting to ask more questions, but I knew how it felt to not want to answer any, so I left it at that and used the slop sink in the corner to wash the filler off my hands. The deer put its head over the rim and stuck its tongue out, trying to lap up the cool water just a bit too far out of reach. I rinsed out my coffee cup and filled it, putting it on the floor. "Will you please name this thing already? I mean, if it's going to stick around, it deserves that much. It makes me feel a little guilty calling a living, breathing thing an 'it'."

"I thought you didn't like her."

"I like _it_ fine." My mind played over the last two days of searching through my attic for my equipment, sidestepping that group of pictures in the corner even though they were all I'd thought about the whole time I was up there. But I had stayed, battling my demons with one goal in mind: to do something for another human being, to do something for Bella. "I've started to contemplate that all life needs to be honored, remembered. Not shoved away like it's nothing. Even that thing. She deserves a name."

Turning away from her before I could move between those legs and stop their dance, my face flamed, and my heart thumped uneasily in my chest. "I might've found something better." I threw odds and ends into a metal bucket, the clanging sound drowning the hum in my ears."Did you find God somewhere under all the junk you've cleared out? You're awfully… upbeat," Bella teased, swinging her legs up high enough that her skirt ruffled.

Her voice was hopeful, almost childlike. "What did you find?"

A knock on the side of the shed made us both turn, my insides saved from harsh exposure as a delivery man stood in his brown uniform, two boxes in hand and two more on the ground.

"Edward Cullen?"

"Yeah."

"I thought this place was empty, was sure there was a mistake on the packaging." The man smiled and put the boxes down, holding out his pad for me to sign. "No one's lived here a good while. You fixing it up?"

"Yeah, a bit. Doesn't need much work." Bella moved from the shadows next to me and picked up a box. The guy's eyes followed her, watching the neckline of her shirt as it gaped, and I shoved the pad into his hands. "Thanks."

"No problem," he answered, still looking at Bella as she read the box. "You gonna be here long, or you're just fixing it to sell?"

I felt the moment she stiffened next to me, a little wisp of breath sucked into her mouth. We hadn't had any sort of discussion about what we were doing, what this thing sprouting between us was. Maybe she hoped I was temporary, maybe that's why she'd invaded my space and gotten so close. Perhaps I was just a quick breeze to her, passing through to cool off with on a hot day.

Or maybe I was the one that was nervous at the question, worried I'd gotten her hopes up, if that's what she had. I tried to figure out how that made me feel, and I thought about the dreamless sleep I'd had the night before, the first time in months my head hadn't screamed at me from behind gray clouds.

"No, not selling."

* * *

"Hand me that screwdriver." I held my hand out blindly behind me and felt the weight of the tool placed into my palm. Two more screws and we officially had ourselves a ventilation system. The old man had one fan on the side, to vent out sawdust I guessed, so all we needed was a source of return air. So one new hole in the opposite wall was cut and two light proof vents I'd ordered, rush delivery, were installed.

"Is that it?"

"Nope, the most important part of the whole thing needs to be done first. You might want to put the deer outside."

Bella looked at me curiously but led the deer out, and I promptly closed the wood doors behind us with a rattle and a creak. Pulling the black velvet drape down from the perch I'd made it, I flicked the light switch to the off position.

My eye adjusted, and I scanned the walls, the two places I figured the fans were, and the folds of the drape.

Nothing but blackness. Perfect, clear, absolute nothingness. It was a good, familiar feeling, like an old friend coming to visit. Memories of hotel bathrooms and heavy canvas tents in remote wilderness fluttered through my mind, and I inhaled, swearing I could smell the chemicals and paper, even though we hadn't started yet.

"Edward?" she whispered next to me, almost like she knew. Like she knew I was shedding a cocoon and needed a moment.

My voice was rough, my insides tumbling with the idea that I wasn't convulsing in fear, wasn't feeling the least bit like running away to avoid what I had come to believe would be horrific if I were to even put this hat on again. "Testing the light. Not a single ray can come in if we want to accomplish perfection."

She said nothing, and I assumed she was searching the walls. "I don't see anything," she finally whispered. "But I feel it."

My throat constricted, and I rubbed my fingers together in the dark. "What do you feel?"

"Magic," she breathed out, like someone seeing the Northern Lights for the first time.

I knew exactly where she stood next to me; I could feel her presence vibrating in the dark. I could feel her energy filling every square inch of the shed. My hand moved to her like a missile honing in on its target under the cover of midnight. "Bella." She said nothing, just laced her fingers through mine. "I—"

A lightning bolt of sunshine broke through whatever was going on in that darkroom, and I swallowed, saved from admitting out loud that I was happy she was the one with me in this moment that weighed more than ten tons of lava. The deer came in, peeking around the heavy velvet curtain, curious and tired of being alone outside.

"What were you going to say?" She squeezed my fingers, but I let them drop.

"I guess we're ready to start. Go on in the house and get the film."

She nodded but gave me a look almost like disappointment before heading out of the shed. It'd been a long time since I had to communicate with people. A life of photography made for a lonely existence. Foreign countries, desolate landscapes, people unable to converse with me due to language barriers. I was there to capture moments, not become intimate with my subjects. I'd learned to be a passing entity, something on the fringe of life, observing but not joining. Especially at the end.

But Bella was making me want to try to connect with the world again. And I feared I was going to speak those thoughts out loud, giving them form and shape, and then I'd fail and let her down, like I let everyone down.

Moving the developing trays in place, sorting the chemicals and the paper we'd had delivered— the routine of getting it all ready didn't feel crushing like I expected. When she looked so forlorn at Sam's because she couldn't send the film out to be developed, it just tumbled out of me to make her a darkroom. No thought of what that would mean, what feelings would surface, how it would affect me. The only thought I had in that moment was I wanted to make her happy.

She came back in, holding the bag high with a bright smile on her face, all signs of disappointment gone. So beautiful, so unlike what I originally thought she was, I stepped right up to her and held her smiling face in my hands.

She _was_ happy. I had done something to make another human being happy.

So I kissed her.

Kissed her solid in the middle of our makeshift darkroom, and I let the weight I'd carried for so long—the self-loathing and guilt—let it all lift from my weary shoulders and fly away to bury itself in foreign debris.

Because she made _me_ happy, too. And I was tired of fighting it.

* * *

We put the deer in Bella's garden to eat and sleep while we worked all afternoon. Teaching her was easy, comfortable. More comfortable than I thought, and she was an eager student. After using a dummy roll to show her how to spool the film, we did the real one in pitch darkness as is required: her hands on mine feeling my fingers work the film, then mine on hers to guide her doing the next. Once the film was secured in the developing canisters, I fumbled in the dark to turn the red bulb on. "Reminds me of a whorehouse in Amsterdam." I smiled.

"And how would you know that?" She laughed easily.

"Purely passing through, I promise." The use of that word was curious, like I wanted to reassure her I was as good a person as she was. I was in some ways—always treated women with respect, was never cruel to anyone—but in my heart, I knew I was contaminated.

Dirty. Soulless.

Smiling at her weakly, I turned my attention back to the film. "Let's see what interested those pretty eyes of yours."

After I showed her how to use the enlarger I'd set up, we went through the steps, the paper sifting back and forth between the trays until we were at the final stage.

The ghostly appearance of black beginning to take shape on white paper made my adrenaline surge. This was always my favorite part: seeing if what I had in my mind matched what I'd been able to capture. "See the image starting to develop?" My hand was on hers, moving the tongs with her as we swirled it in the solution.

The deer, with a crown of flowers around its neck, appeared, and Bella let out a slight gasp. "I did that."

"Is it the way you saw it? When you took it, I mean?"

I had to admit, the image was a good one for a first try. We didn't have to crop it much under the enlarger. She'd gotten the composition almost perfect: not too much head room, just close enough to pick up the shine in the deer's eye but not so close you couldn't see the surroundings of tall grass and setting sun.

We pulled it out of the stop bath together, and Bella carefully clipped it on the line to dry. She stared at it, her hand on her mouth, when a tear slid down her face. "What? What is it?" My hands went to her shoulders, and I felt her shudder a little.

"It's perfect. It's beautiful… I can see why you're drawn to this."

I leaned into her, the moody glow of the room making me feel more human than I had in a long time. To me the darkroom was always the place I could be myself, where I felt most like I was connected with something. It was the same, no matter where I was, whether it was in a hut in Borneo or a five-star hotel in Iceland. My chemicals, my trays, my paper and tongs. They were the familiar things in the nomadic life I'd created.

My chin went to her shoulder, and I didn't stop my arms from circling her waist, pulling her back to me. "There's nothing better than seeing something with your own eye, something majestic or achingly beautiful, but if you can bring those images to people and make them see it like it is with _their_ own eyes... well, it's a close second."

She shifted against me, her weight leaning, allowing my lips to find her neck. "Want to do another?" I said against her, kissing her perfumed skin and letting myself go, letting myself revel and not overthink the fact I was sharing something so personal, something I loved so damn much, with someone else.

She nodded but didn't move, so I kissed her neck some more, let my hands slide over her abdomen to bunch up her shirt. Rough fingers on soft skin, and I longed to take a picture of all of it under the somewhat racy red light.

The moment a small moan escaped her is when I lost it, turning her quickly and bringing my hands up to her face, holding her there while I took her mouth under mine and buried all my doubts and self-loathing into her. She took it, her hands crawling up my shoulders to catch themselves in my hair. I thought I'd come when she pulled, gently, but pulled just the same. I shuffled us, so she was pinned against the workbench, the tools on the bottom shelf clanging together as her leg hitched up around mine, pulling me closer against her.

There was no denying my body wanted her, and she didn't pretend like she didn't know. She moved against me like the red light made her bold—flashes of her hair, her lips, her eyes more vixen than virgin, so I gave up and ground against her, making her cry out my name. I knew we had to stop, that I had to be the one to do it, so I eased off, my mouth moving slower, less frantically, more politely. She fell in step right with me, letting me go easily, like she knew this wouldn't be the last time. I felt like a child staring at her, like a horny teenager making out in a closet, unsure she was really there, or if my mind wasn't conjuring her from years of solitude.

She broke the spell first, and I was glad because I wasn't sure I wouldn't escape within her, never to return. "I want to see another of the ones we took together."

We moved to the enlarger, Bella's back attached to my front, and I watched and kissed her as she looked through the negatives, until she picked one of her house and began to work on it. Under my hands, her stomach rumbled, and she let out an embarrassed laugh. "Forgot to eat today."

"I'll go make us something." I kissed her once more, somewhat awed at the fact that being with her, touching her, and showing just a small bit of affection was feeling natural. "You can do a few without me, I think."

"I'll try." Her smile back at me over her shoulder was playful, unsure, but no less bright.

As I walked towards the house, the clouds overhead broke apart, and sunshine fell through, melting across the rocky driveway, inching along the grass, and finally shining down on me.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	23. Chapter 23

**We're baa-aaack!**

 **Did you miss us? We missed you guys and our crazy deer-and-paint-lovin' twosome. Sorry we did not get to reply to every review from the last chapter, but we had a nice week off. We will try to catch up this week if we missed yours. We're so in love with every word you send us.**

 **xoxo HB/PB**

* * *

 **Chapter 23**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

Between the crickets, between Edward humming his way toward his house, and between the mindless tick of seconds, the image of my house came into view.

Between my heartbeats and the birdsong and the swish of the wind, it rose up from the paper, slow as a ghost from a grave. The eaves. The porch. The silhouette against the sky. The light fading fast behind it. The streak of something white that looked as though it was dashing across the porch, too fast to be caught.

I ran.

Threw the photo down and bolted.

My feet didn't know how to do anything but run. My heart didn't do anything but flee.

The house… that photo. I had never seen it so outside the walls before, so removed, and it did something terrible to me. Cut me deep and mean down the center because that was my life there, my entire world distilled, and if it looked that sad on paper, did I look the same? The way it sat there on the horizon like it was angry to simply exist, slumped and tired. The evening sky left it in shadows, dark and gloomy, except for the streak of light racing across the porch.

A white flash that sliced the house in half and looked so out of place—it could only be made by something not quite touching the land of the living.

Her soul. Or her ghost.

A spark from the other side.

I ran. Dropped the photo on the countertop and ran as though I could fly, my heart thundering hummingbird-time, throat clenched hard around something that felt like a forest fire. I skidded to a stop on the porch, all fury and fear, huffing at the screen door with my blood pounding hot, my stomach gone cold. I felt like shedding my skin, like holding my breath until I drowned, like screaming at her because I knew she could hear me.

Instead, I kicked the door.

Yelled out loud and put my foot through the mesh. It caved easily, torn down the middle around my ankle, and I kicked it again for good measure, the frame groaning in protest. I was going to tear that door right off the house. Rip the wallpaper from the plaster and pull all the ivy off the porch. I was going to take a hammer to the mirrors. Put my feet and my fists and my aching rage through the floors and the windows. Bring that whole behemoth down around me.

First, I was going to destroy that fucking carpet.

I stormed the kitchen and pulled the butcher knife out of the block with a cool swish of steel, rounding on the hallway as though I was going to battle—nerves and terror and wild determination. My knees scraped harshly against wood and fiber as I collapsed into the hallway, the knife shaking and my breath coming fast. I gripped an edge and sawed through the carpet, the fibers so old they flaked away around the blade in a fine dust of polyester.

I was crying by the time I got a few inches in. Hiccuping tears as I neared the other edge. Full on sobbing by the time I started hacking into the carpet on the other side of that spot.

It took twelve awful minutes to tear it free.

I flung the chunk of carpet out the door, narrowly missing the fawn in the process. She darted away, missed by inches, and stopped at the edge of the yard. When she looked back at me, ears trembling, there was fear on her face. I sobbed again, wiped my eyes, and held my arms out to her, feeling guilty. But she ran. Just like I did. Back out over the grass toward Edward's house because at this moment, he was the safer, softer, nicer one of the two of us. Edward the shattered. Edward the bitter and brilliant and brave and broken. Edward the shining light of salvation.

She took one last look at me and bolted in his direction.

I stood, the knife clattering to the floorboards, soggy vision and wobbly heart. The house felt so empty, hollow, yet full to bursting with her and me and the moment of dreadful confrontation that ended it all, right where I was standing now. I grabbed hold of a peeling corner of that ugly wallpaper and pulled. It ripped off jagged and arched like a big swipe of paint, the drab grey plaster beneath it. I grabbed another corner and another, my heart beating harder with every angry swipe of curled up wallpaper discarded on that now-bare hallway floor.

Anguish felt like the sharpened edge of a knife. Like the moment before you know you're going to die. Like seeing your reflection in the shiny sheen of a bullet, the warp in your face as it spun slow motion for your forehead and you ducked, but not before you felt it graze your cheek.

Anguish felt like your mother on the other end of that gun.

I stood panting in that exact spot, the imprint of my fearful footprints burned there, just as surely as she had stained the carpet. The vision of her was so strong, I wasn't entirely convinced I was hallucinating. The wild flyaway of her hair and her dress as dirty as if she'd gone out and rolled around in the dirt. The feral, desperate look in her eyes. The way her face twisted and her mouth opened, but she hadn't said a word before the blast deafened both of us

Turning slow on my heels, I scanned the room, mentally plotting trajectories, until my eyes found the tiny bullet hole in the wall, just at the edge of the bookcase. Forgotten by me and unnoticed by everyone else until now.

There was a pair of scissors in an old sewing basket, forgotten for decades. I dug until I found them, the metal cool as I gripped the blades. They probably belonged to my grandmother, maybe the grandmothers before her, and I wondered how many of them fell off the same cliff my mom had. How many had fallen face first into the earth and stumbled to their feet, broken and twisted in every way—tragedy bringing out the worst in them. A long line of them, I had been told. From death to divorce to lightning strikes, the women who forged the path across time to end with me were prone to the ravages of life and heartbreak, their minds often falling victim long before their bodies.

Maybe I was doomed to follow.

I stood on the arm of the couch and gouged the scissors into the wall, white plaster snowfall all over my feet, and I coughed around it hovering in the air. The drywall came away easy, a crumble after only a slight provocation as though the house was eager to let this thing go. A sore tooth, this last trace of evidence, now that the carpet was up. I flung the scissors, clattering to the floor as I dug my fingers the rest of the way and pulled the bullet free. I dusted it off on my shirt and peered at it, a mangled, misshapen image of me peering back.

Something upstairs crashed to the floor, splintering the silence.

I almost fell off the arm of the couch, flattening against the wall to keep upright. "Mom?" I yelled, voice echoing against a silence like a million voices screaming at me, all at once.

"Mom!" I clambered off the couch, the bullet tucked into my pocket, and I took the steps two at a time, falling into her room like a cyclone. I raced to the window and flung it open, the sash groaning in protest, fresh air flooding the room. When I turned, I half expected the contents to turn to ash, the way ancient mummies do when they've touched air for the first time in too long.

Nothing happened.

"I can't live like this," I told her. "You have to go. Just go! Go!" I waved my hands wildly in front of the window, hoping to push her ghost out into the wilderness. Ushering her out, picking up a dress and tossing it right out into the sky. It landed soft and bouncy in the grass far below me. I threw her stack of books into the grass behind it. Threw her pillow and her lamp and her set of hairbrushes out too. Grabbed an armful of clothing and hauled it out the window as well. I threw out her blanket and even knocked over her bedside table purely for the vengeance of it. I'd nearly emptied the room before I came across it.

The doll.

That goddamned doll, eyes hollow and head empty, with a heart made out of cotton. It smiled dumbly back up at me, and I flooded all of my rage and my hurt and my resentment down my arm right into its stupid soft body. Poisoned it with my hatred. "Fuck you," I hissed at it before I flung it out the window, good riddance.

I stood in front of the window, waiting to feel it—the release, the shift of weight, the temperance of all the guilt, but nothing happened. I felt heavier than ever.

"Bella."

I spun, unsteady hands on the vanity chair to keep upright. Edward. In the doorway, his hands hanging helpless in the air, face grey around the edges. His mouth hung open, and I could only imagine it, this scene he was stumbling across. A messy girl in the middle of her messy life, having a fit over her mother's non-ghost and talking to dolls.

"What are you doing? The carpet and— " He glanced around at the mess I'd made, and at me, slumped like a broken bird in the middle of a minefield.

"I hate this place." My words came out rotten, and I picked up the flimsy little chair right off the floor. Turned in one fell swoop and took out the pretty mirror. From one to one hundred million in a shattered heartbeat of wood to glass.

The glass exploded, showering me in rainfall of shrapnel.

"Whoa!" Edward shouted at me and put his hands out further, holding his palms toward me as though he was approaching a rabid dog. "Just hold on a second." His eyes dropped to my feet, the dust-fine sprinkle of glass and wood shattered all around me, and he edged a careful foot closer across the carpet.

"Don't touch me!" I snapped, harshly enough to make him jump. He stilled instantly, his eye hard on mine, and his jaw set in a vise grip.

"Fine. But don't you dare take a single fucking step." He looked at my feet again and glared even harder. Here he was, worried about my feet when it was my heart and my head and my screaming conscience that he should be warning me against. "What is this, Bella? What are you doing?"

"She's here," I hissed. "I can feel her; I saw her. In the photo." The last bit of it came out as a sob, a tiny crack wrenching open at the base of my enormous dam. The giant barrier holding back the messy, bloody bits of me, patched together with white grade school glue and scotch tape.

" _Who_ is here?" Edward asked, wary and guarded.

"My mother," I said faintly, sure that she was listening. "The house, that photo… didn't you see it?"

Recognition flashed across Edward's face. "The light, the swipe of it down the middle?" He shook his head at me. "That could be anything. Weird sun reflections, dust, or moisture on the lens. It doesn't mean you… caught her."

We both knew he didn't exactly believe himself. I glared at him.

"I want to burn it down."

"Burn what down, exactly?" He'd somehow moved closer without even sparking my attention, creeping stealthily across the carpet as though he was practiced at this sort of thing. Approaching the enemy. Going unnoticed.

"The house. This house. All of this," I stammered, throwing my arms around myself, knowing full well that I looked like a crazy person, that I might well be following those familial footsteps into madness. That he probably thought I was completely bonkers and was going to run as far away from me as he could get.

Good.

"You can't burn down your—"

"You can't fix me," I hissed.

"I've got no intentions of _fixing_ you." He jabbed a finger at me, face stern. "I'm in no place to fix anyone but myself."

The sadness in his voice, the way it caught behind his teeth before he spoke, the way his face turned brittle around the edges… something about him broke me. The boiling pit of rage and remorse that had been threatening to explode for weeks now, finally boiling over. I picked up a vase full of dead daisies, death rattles of crispy petals as I smashed it to the floor at my feet, right there between us like a grenade, filling the room with something that tasted of rot and perfume.

"That's it," he snapped. He swooped forward and plucked me up out of my mess, the glass and bone and dead flowers, ghosts and all. He swung us out of the room and down the stairs, his fingers throbbing hard and hot against me, breathing roughly. Down the stairs and out into the fading sunshine. Far into the field between our houses, he set me on my feet and held me tight by the arms as if he was sure I was going to bolt again. I was breathing so hard the horizon was starting to spin, spots of light hovering all around us, my lungs burning hellfire and molten brimstone. There was so much air out here, out of that house, but I felt like I was suffocating in the sunshine.

I was drowning.

"Take a breath," he ordered, gripping my face hard in both hands. I gaped at him, lungs frozen. "Breathe, dammit." I did as he said, the air coming shaky, stumbling in and out of my lungs. "Do it again." Another breath, pulling easier this time. "Another." I felt air hit my lungs for the first time in what felt like hours, a cool soothe over the burn in my chest. I slumped against him, his arms coming around my shoulders as I held tight to fistfuls of his shirt.

It was quiet for a long time, save the crickets and the frogs and the swooping bats through the twilight, before he took my hand and led me toward his house. Porch light glowing and the fawn waiting on the top step and my house fading into the dark behind my back.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

She sat at my kitchen table in my shorts and shirt, sipping on the whiskey I'd given her as soon as she'd changed out of her dirty plaster and glass-littered clothes. She pulled her legs up and embraced them, resting her chin on her knees, making her appear small and childlike.

I didn't want to push, but what the fuck had happened over there? It was a tornado, as sure as shit the same as the one that brought me to find her in our field in the first place.

Last thing I knew, I was coming out of my kitchen, whistling and happy to have made her a fucking tuna sandwich, only to see the shed doors wide open and the darkroom empty. She'd gotten another shot developed. It sat right there on the workbench, and when I looked at it, it seemed harmless enough to me.

It was just one of the pictures of her house, but obviously something had been on the lens, and she had a sun shadow streaked clear across it from upper left corner down to where the garden grew in the bottom of the frame.

She couldn't be so upset about that, surely? She had just started to learn how to take pictures; these things happened. Hell, one of my best shots—a bolt of lightning striking a beach in Adelaide, Australia—was ruined by my own stupid finger getting in front of my lens like an amateur.

"Bella?" I'd called out, thinking maybe she had slipped by me in the house to use the bathroom. I looked around for the deer, and it was gone too. Standing in my gravel driveway, I stared dumbly at my property like I'd catch her sunbathing nonchalantly on the porch.

A faint crash sounded behind me, and I whipped around, my heart beating fast. A sick, unnamed dread filled me, and my war-honed instincts told me it wasn't more unbalanced flowers on a sill. This crash was deliberate, had meaning, and when I heard her voice, harsh and angry, call out after it, I had no other thought in me but to move.

Running over the dead grass through the field between our houses, the crashes that hit my ear became more frequent and loud. I stopped short when I saw the deer on shaky legs just outside the house, its little ears trembling and flicking at unseen flies.

Suddenly, a baby doll missed my head by inches, and I stared at the blank-eyed monstrosity now lying on the grass, its arm bent grotesquely behind its gray body. My blood rushed through my ears, and my heart hammered double.

I knew that doll.

It was the doll in the picture. The one Bella stood next to, her eyes sad, even with a smile on her face. It was the doll the old men cruelly joked about outside Sam's hardware, like Bella was nothing, so it didn't matter what they said.

The crazy woman's doll.

 _Bella's_ crazy mother's doll.

The screen door was split, and the mesh laid dead on the floor as I walked through the splintered wood. "Bella?" I called, but I didn't really expect an answer. I moved through the kitchen, my feet stopping short as soon as I saw the hole in the floor where that odd stain had been.

Hacked and jagged, the rim around the now-exposed dark wood floor screamed at me that something had gone seriously wrong in this house at some point. Still was, I knew, as I looked at the plaster powder covering the sofa and Bella's footprint squarely in the middle of the chaos.

Another crash from above, and I stared at that footprint, cursing her and her damn desire for bare feet. "Bella!" I yelled again, taking the steps two at a time. My heart beat me up there, my pulse making my veins close to bursting. Unsure of what I would see, I slowed before I reached the door. When I finally looked into the room, I saw in front of me the very thing I felt in myself every day.

Pure and utter agony.

"Can I have some more?" Bella's small voice snapped me from my thoughts and dropped me back in my kitchen. I poured a bit more whiskey in her glass and a lot more in mine.

The chair scraped against the linoleum as I sat across from her. I wanted to take her into my lap, to hold her and shush her and smooth away the baby-fine hairs around her forehead as I kissed them. But I stayed where I was, knowing she'd let me do other things to her until we both forgot about what happened that afternoon and got caught up in each other. The old me would've taken every liberty to not have to deal with any of this, but the new me—the one this annoying neighbor was eliciting—wanted to soothe her in other ways.

"So…" I swallowed around the burn of the liquor, unsure. "That happened."

"Yeah."

My fingers fiddled idly with the lace doily that sat under the napkin holder. "Wanna say something about it?"

"What's there to say?"

"You said you wanted to burn your house down." My lip turned up a bit. "After your bang-up job remodeling over there, I don't think you have a choice now."

She stared at me, eyes as big as that damn deer. The clock on the wall ticked the seconds until a slow, sanguine smile filled her face. Her hand went up to cover it, but there was no denying she was on the verge of laughing, and I was relieved.

"I mean, it was dated and all, but really, you should've just hired a decorator." Her shoulders shook a bit, and she ducked her head. "Remind me not to ask you to help with this place." That did it: she laughed in bursts, and it was a beautiful thing to hear. She laughed big, loud and all out. So loud for a girl her size.

We laughed together until she wiped happy tears from her eyes. Pouring us both more whiskey, I waited on her to come around, but she wasn't offering up anything. She seemed more at ease than she had been an hour ago, when I was literally scared about what she might do. Sipping from my cup, I couldn't help but think about my own breaking point, the mess I left in Rose's apartment as I tore through it like a hellstorm, lashing out in a drunken stupor and pleading with her to just kill me, kill me like I'd killed him.

Bella chuckled and pulled me from my thoughts. "Look at that thing—she thinks she's a dog." I glanced over to the faded maroon couch and watched the deer claw at the cushion beneath it, before curling up in a ball to sleep.

"No one would ever believe it." I could barely believe it myself—that I'd let these two creatures into my home and into my life—a life I was hell-bent on living out in solitude, so I couldn't harm anyone else. But I didn't seem to be hurting Bella at all. In fact, I felt like I was something she needed, something that finally came along to break the webs of misery clinging to her for who knows how long. From what I could tell, the camera really seemed to wake her up from her drifting stupor and rescue her from the cloud of rumors that followed her. Something happened this afternoon with that picture of her house, but I hoped that didn't mean she was done exploring what life might be like for her outside this black hole of a town. I deserved to live here; she did not.

"Why don't you take a picture of it, so we have proof?"

"Um…"

"Look, I don't know what freaked you out about that picture, but that kind of thing happens all the time. Exposure is wrong, aperture is off—hell, a piece of dust once ruined an awesome picture I took of a teepee in Nevada. It happens."

"A piece of dust?"

"Yeah, a squall of wind kicked up and got in the lens. I cleaned it out and moved on." I kicked her leg under the table. "Move on." I meant it much bigger than that, bigger than a ruined picture. "I think you have a really good eye from what we've developed already."

I watched as her face changed. Fear to hope, hope to pride. "You think I have a good eye?"

My hand rose, and my knuckles brushed the hair away from where it lay across her forehead. My fingers traced the outer corner of her eye, tiptoed across her slightly freckled nose, and landed at her cheek, which I stroked gently. "I think you have a beautiful eye." She dipped her head slightly and smiled at the compliment. "The other one isn't bad either." Smiling at her, my heart swelled with life at the ease in which I did so.

I decided right then and there, that if this fragile girl was strong enough to overcome the shadows that dwarfed her, maybe I wouldn't fight the life that was trying to crawl back inside me. At least I'd _try_.

"Okay. I'll go get the camera from the darkroom."

"Sounds good."

"On one condition."

My entire body froze. Sure she was going to badger me into taking pictures or talking about myself or any of the hundred things I was trying to avoid by moving into her backyard. My hand gripped my whiskey tight, tight like the fear and pressure that was clenched around my heart.

She nodded towards the old radio in the corner. "Teach me how to dance?"

"Dance?" I replied stupidly, like I had no idea the meaning of the simple word.

"You seem to be a natural teacher," she blushed a bit at that, and I wondered just what she was thinking about. "And I've seen you walk and move. You have a stealth, a grace, that can't be taught. I'll bet you're an excellent dancer."

The stealth and grace as she called it was years of learning to not walk on land mines or dead bodies. And her request felt very much the same.

"I don't know…"

She stood, her hand reaching out for mine. "I would really like to be close to you right now." She admitted that so unafraid, I was in awe of her. To see her happy again after the events of today... well, I didn't have it in me to see her look so broken and drained anytime soon. She pulled, and I followed, out into the middle of the living room that now had a few more pictures on its wall. Rice paddies in Thailand, a giraffe in Africa with its neck surrounding its young, a vast white Alaska with a single polar bear in the middle of a glacier, and most recently, the picture of my parents at their anniversary party.

"I don't really know how," I confessed, relieved at least it was a slow Gershwin tune and not some swing. Bella took both her hands, reached up and gripped my shoulders and pulled herself up a few inches. I looked down at the brown carpet, bare in spots, seeing my feet now under hers.

"I trust you," she said, like she really fucking did. I wanted to scream at her that she shouldn't. That I was no good, no good for her, and I would ultimately break her.

But I didn't.

I swayed slowly like she was some fragile egg I was afraid of cracking and spilling her guts all over the floor. We stuttered around in a circle for a minute, my hands gripping her waist to hold her to me or to make sure she didn't run, I wasn't so sure. We moved together like that until she took her arms and circled them around my neck, her body pressing against mine, as someone sang about summertime being easy.

And it was, right then. It was so fucking easy. What was heavy just moments ago in my dead heart suddenly felt lighter, as light as she was as I clumsily stumbled her around the room.

"I trust you, too."

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

I was terrible at dancing.

So was he.

I was all nervous tension, and he was full of indecision. I could feel it thrumming through both of us, a high anxiety wire strung tight between us that locked up our spines, cramped up our hands, and tripped up his feet, then mine. I laid my head on his chest—the thump, thump, thump of his heart beneath his ribs as he exhaled.

It was easier then. His uncertain shuffles gone smooth and sure-footed, our hands finally finding places to hold onto, our breathing coming soft and slow. I clung to his shoulders, and he wrapped his arms around my ribs, and we danced. Still shuffling, nothing like the elaborate twirling and dipping and double-time steps Jack and Millie used to do every evening. I'd sit on the porch and watch them, her house dress and his dusty boots circling slow and then fast and then slow again through the damp, dusky evenings as the sun kissed the horizon.

Millie told me once that dancing wasn't a thing you learned—it was a thing that came to you. When two pieces came together, cut for one another out of the same cloth. When your souls lined up just right—a blinding light brushing up against a bottomless dark—that's when it happened. The magic.

In the right moment with the right partner, anyone can dance, she said.

It wasn't practice, or talent.

It was a feeling.

"I—" I hesitated, cheek to his chest, not sure how to say any of that. Of this. How could I put such big feelings into such small words and speak them out loud like they didn't weigh ten thousand pounds? How could I wrap up this boiling tsunami in me and present it to him in a way that made sense, much less hold it back from destroying everything in its path? A single swipe takedown if I didn't tread carefully through the churning ocean around us.

"Thank you," I said.

Simple. True.

"For what, exactly?" His voice rumbled in his chest, rough and low beneath my ear.

"For being here. With me." I swallowed. "For me."

I pulled back to look up at him, and he smiled down at me, feet still shuffling, fingers still dug through the fabric of the t-shirt he'd made me change into. He looked tired, his eye wrinkled at the edges and dark just beneath, eyelid heavy and hooded. He looked wary and skittish. Worn out, distracted, broken. But I was broken too, and maybe that was what Millie was talking about when she said dancing came easy to two pieces that fit together.

Here we were in her living room, rubbing all of our busted bits up against each other like there might be some salvation somewhere underneath the grind of jagged edges.

Edward shrugged lightly, his eye glinting. "I like your face. And your weird pet." He chewed on his lip once before saying "I like your smile, even though I don't see it very often."

It was the second compliment he'd given me in so many hours, and my heart flip-flopped like a fish out of water. He had told me I had a beautiful eye, and he may have only been talking about taking pictures, but God, I felt the exact same way about him. About his beautiful eye. That pretty green, the same shade that appears through the last bite of snow, fresh and soft, pushing up through all the winter dead. The deeper green of ancient pine trees haloing his iris. The dark lashes and the darker swipe of eyebrow. The way his whole face shifted with his emotions, that one eye carrying the burden of his joy and pain and sadness and curiosity.

The eyepatch was taunting me now, no longer a minefield mystery or an unanswered question hovering over us like a raincloud. Now, it was a lesson in patience. An exercise in tempered curiosity. The forceful swallow of all the things I wanted, shoving them back down beneath my rib cage where they were safe and secret and unspoken.

I wanted to see his face.

His whole face.

So badly.

But I didn't know what to expect underneath there. Didn't know if the patch was a forever kind of thing and if I should let go of the deep biting intrigue if only to save myself the disappointment later. I didn't know if one day, when it came off, _if_ it came off, I'd have to swallow what I saw underneath as cold, hard truth. I didn't know if he'd be blind, or scarred, or perfectly fine. I didn't know if I'd ever get that glimpse of him, the entirety, if the eyepatch was meant for him forever.

I was too afraid to ask.

I kissed him instead

Stood my toes on his toes and licked his bottom lip, asking him to let me without any words. Just hands and lips and breath. He let out a rush of air, arms tightening around me, picking me clear up off his feet to kiss me back. His face was scratchy and his skin was hot and I was lost between his teeth, climbing him just to get closer.

I wanted him laid out underneath me. Wanted to sprawl out underneath him. Wanted to capture it all on film and then do it all over again. I wanted more than I thought I deserved, but I had no shame in letting my plea, my order, fall out of my mouth.

"Let's go upstairs," I panted, his teeth down my neck, my legs around his waist, his fingers tangled painfully in my hair. Edward didn't even hesitate, held me tighter as he turned, as ready as I was to make this whole messy thing into something coherent... to give it a name. To finally do something about the ball of heat constantly burning beneath our tongues and behind our fingerprints

"Wait," I gasped. He stopped, one foot on the stairs. "I have to get something."

I wiggled out of his grip and ran headlong out the door, sliding into the darkroom and grabbing the camera I'd been using the most lately. When I tumbled back into the house he was still standing there with his foot on the step. His eye fell to the camera, and the brow over it arched high with surprise, maybe delight, but definitely a spark of excitement there in the green.

"You got a plan for that thing?"

I shook my head. "No plans. Sometimes it's better to just feel it, right?"

With a grin, he grabbed my hand and tugged me up the stairs.

Crisp white bedroom walls, smooth hardwood floors, and enormous open windows with the breeze rushing through and the sunshine pouring in—the prairie rolling away like we were on a ship, floating somewhere far out to sea. There was a dresser with a few boxes of clothes stacked beside it. A full length mirror leaning up against the wall, a leftover from Millie. A mattress was sprawled right on the floor, with blue sheets and a few crumpled pillows. His floppy boots slouched by the doorway. A book was squashed open-faced on the floor.

I turned to him, framed in the doorway, and felt a sudden rush of wild freedom. He was flushed and bright-eyed and beautiful. I held the camera up to my face and took a photo of the palm of his hand when he held it up in front of him.

"Cut it out," he grumbled. "You're wasting film."

"It's not a waste."

He didn't say anything. Just stared at me for a moment that felt like eternity before stepping closer, hot hands and sober face and the mattress buckling underneath us as we fell onto it.

He navigated me slowly. Sure and brave and undaunted, like the best kind of explorer. This was no race to the gold, no rush against the clock. It was a leisurely search. A treasure hunt that was as much about the end goal as it was about the scenery along the way. He licked and kissed and tasted and sucked his way across every inch of me, telling me that the trio of freckles on my thigh looked like a pyramid and that the runnels of blue veins behind my knees reminded him of the Ganges when it flooded its banks. I took a photo of his lips against my stomach, of his head bowed low over the waistband of my underwear. He pulled the shirt up over my head, pushed his fingers between my legs, his breathing going deep and ragged. I gasped, the light doing something funny, blinding, as my skin went up in fire, hands grappling for something, anything, to hold on to. I felt like I was being tossed headlong off a cliff, off a mountain, off the edge of the world into a bottomless, star-speckled universe, weightless even as I fell right through the floor.

I crash-landed face down on his bed, my cheek to the cool cotton sheet and my breath racing to catch up with me. Edward's lips pressed once, twice, to the base of my spine, his hand caressing my backside, kneading my ass and rubbing my thighs as I panted into the sheets. His breath blew hot and wanting up my spine, lips dragging, chest and hips and that pressing, persistent hard searching hungry and headlong. I couldn't help the instinctual shove of my hips, lifting off the bed to rub up against him. Edward's breath hissed through his teeth, and he sat up on me, his hips rocking as his hands gripped my ass. He slid against me in an infuriatingly slow pendulum of push of and pull.

I tangled my fingers up in the sheet, arching to meet him higher, harder, longer.

"Fuck," he muttered, thrusting slow and smooth against me. I ground my face into the sheets, the feel of him almost unbearable, and caught a glimpse of us in that mirror, my tangled hair and arched back. His hands splayed over my hips as he watched himself rub all along the length of me, staring down between us. My stomach twisted itself into a double knot.

Edward pulled away, sitting on his heels, his fingers tugging me off the mattress, pulling me flush to sit in his lap. All of him pressed up against me, inside of me, roaming all over me, hands and lips and cock, and I writhed against him.

"Look," he rasped, a finger against my chin to turn my head. The image of us caught there, reflected in the mirror, glowing in the last damp light before the sun set. My fingers grappled for the camera strap, the cool metal against my face, as I pointed the lens at the mirror.

 _Snap_.

His head bowed low over my neck, lips to my collarbone, and the deep russet of his hair flopping across my skin. My face hidden behind the big round lens. The sheets in a landslide pile around us.

 _Snap._

His hand cupping my breast, nipple rolling between his calluses. The way his toes curled tight and his scar-marred tattoo languished angry and black across his arm. The strap of the eyepatch digging into his forehead.

 _Snap_.

Fingers slipping between my thighs, exploring where all of his hard disappeared into all of my soft.

 _Snap_.

My head thrown back over his shoulder, an orgasm barreling through me like a big, angry bull in a very small china shop, the camera hovering in trembling hands, the photograph sure to be blurred and sun-spotted.

 _Snap_.

"Put that away," he growled, prying the camera from my hands and tossing it carelessly onto the floor, his hand finding firm grip on me again. One more thrust, two, and he clutched me against him, panting against my back.

* * *

I woke to thunder.

A slow rolling wave that crept its way across the flatlands, soft and far away, blurry booming and shadow flashes against the walls.

I lay pinned beneath Edward. He felt like sunshine. Like the first warm wind at the end of a very long winter. Like the great, wide, gaping mouth of the sky studded in stars and the dew-wet grass under the sumacs on fall mornings. He felt like the rain, tapping on the roof. Tapping on my head. Tap tap tapping paint-flecked calluses and scar tissue up against the soft, tender places beneath my bones.

I knew he was awake because his breathing changed. The slow, steady rise and fall of his back, his ear to my chest. I stroked my fingernails across his scalp, along the shell of his ear, down his spine.

"You awake?" His voice was rough, guttural and low, words slipping through the slow tango dance of raindrops.

"I'm sorry about today." I wondered what he had thought, coming back from the house to find the darkroom empty and me gone, what a mess I'd made of my house. What a mess I'd made of myself. Having to remind me how to do basic things like breathe.

"Yeah, you busted up that door I worked so hard on." He pinched the skin of my thigh and chuckled at my squeal. "Gonna have to make you work that one off. No more handyman shit for free."

"It felt good," I admitted, remembering the zing of pure, rippling fury that had washed over me and the epic wave that released itself the moment my foot when through the mesh of that shitty screen door. "I think she's there. In the house."

I wasn't sure of that at all, actually. I'd spent days waiting for her to arrive, a specter at the kitchen table telling me that my hair was a mess and that the kitchen faucet was still dripping and that she could hear him, my brother, crying out there in the grass somewhere. But she never showed, and maybe it was just my buried guilt that was imagining her back into the land of the living.

"Your mom… she…" he trailed off, looking uncomfortable, the word heavy in his mouth. "She died." Not a question.

I nodded.

"The hallway," he said, distant and knowing, despite everything I'd worked so hard not to tell him. I stared up at the ceiling, the wooden boards gone rough and warped. The rain was falling heavier now, a steady thrum against the roof but nothing compared to the flood of water behind my eyes. My teeth pressed so hard into my lip I should have been bleeding, and my ears throbbed the melody of my heavy heartbeat. Edward stroked a hand down my side, his breath on my face.

"My imagination is running wild over here… and it's not good."

I sighed, picking through my piles of rubble for the right words, the right place to start, the right way to say anything.

"I had a brother. He died before I was born."

Edward's stroking hand stilled on my thigh, fingertips pressing in for a breath before he spoke. "That's—" he choked then cleared his throat. "I'm sorry."

I sighed, my gut wrenching and my head gone unbidden to that baby doll lying in the grass under the cold night sky. "I think she wanted me to be a boy, to be him. It disappointed her every single day that I wasn't. She would get so, so angry and then so sad... and I never knew which mother I was going to get." Edward gripped me tighter, and I grappled for words. "I tried to love her. I tried really, really hard to love her, but I'm not sure she ever loved me. She was too lost to love anyone."

"Losing a child is a special sort of hell." I could hear the sadness in his voice, dripping down his throat, catching up the words, and wringing them dry before they were set free.

"The thing is, I—" My throat clamped down. There was no way to explain this without incriminating my mother, staining her character, tainting his otherwise mild vision of her. There was no way to sugarcoat her often awful flavor. It couldn't be helped. "I was told so many versions of the story—she told me so many things I can hardly believe, things I don't _want_ to believe. About him. About how he died."

"You doubt her story?"

" _Stories_ ," I corrected. "I'm not sure if she killed him or if it was an accident. She said he got out. Middle of the night, middle of winter. He crawled outside. They didn't find him for a week."

Edward sighed, something heavy in his chest.

"It broke her. Slowly. She just started crumbling. At first, it was just bits and pieces, but toward the end, she was… doomed. I was doomed," I stammered.

I stayed silent for a while, just breathing—just remembering to breathe—before I could speak again. "She was in another one of her moods. And I figured out a long time ago to steer clear of her when she got that deep. But she started breaking things and screaming something awful, and when I went downstairs to try to calm her, she had a gun."

The gaping chest wound I had been nursing all month suddenly burst open, fresh and new and raw as ever, full of rot and malice. Maggots and mold. I shook my head angrily, letting the tears fall finally, tainted with a healthy coat of rage instead of pure, heartrending sadness.

"I knew it would end terribly between us," I choked. "I always knew it."

He folded me against him, arms sturdy around my shoulders, and let me shudder my way through the whirlpool, black and rank and bottomless.

"Where's the gun?"

"Buried." I choked on that gun as surely as it if the barrel were pressed between my teeth. "Somewhere," I finished, lamely.

His raised his eyebrow, but he didn't prod for more information. Instead, he brushed my hair off my cheeks and over my shoulder, wiping my tears off my face with a big, calloused thumb. He didn't say anything—just looked—like he was searching beneath my skin for all the fractures, the scars, the ragged bits that had turned me into an unsalvageable version of myself.

"I'm just this lonely, floating planet now. There's no one left. I have nothing to hold me down except a stupid deer and a stupid house and a town full of stupid people who believe in gossip over gospel. I'm starting to think that I don't mean anything, that I won't be anyone. Everything I have ever loved has either rotted, died, or tried to kill me."

Edward was silent for a long while.

"I want you to have it," he said. "The box… with the cameras."

The box. _That_ box. The one that was still on the kitchen table. The one that had bitten back like a box of snakes when I touched it. The box that had turned his face into stone and his words into poison. He looked back at me hard, his eye crinkling and his mouth set narrow and straight. "I meant it—you've got a good eye. It seems a shame to let those things rot."

"You want me to use them?"

"I want you to _have_ them."

"But…" I swallowed hard, my stomach bottoming out. "What if you want to… do it again, maybe… someday?" I was stumbling over my tongue and my flip-flop insides, holding tightly to his neck. Fear and excitement and joy and such extreme, heavy sadness all rolling across his face in tidal waves.

I waited, wishing for a spark, a pinprick of light, at the end of his long, dark tunnel, but it didn't happen. I was hoping for a sign, a whisper of promise, wanting a phoenix to rise up out of his ashes. He shook his head at me, mouth pulling to one side, his eye gone tight.

"I'd rather watch you do it," he said.

He wasn't a phoenix.

He was a firestorm.

And his ashes were still falling.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

The eye patch stared back at me, black, angry, and accusing. It taunted me with every look in the mirror and reminded me every second I deserved all I got. But the last week, it told me I was a coward, hiding and cowering behind the pity I've let fester within me. She bared her soul, told me all her darkest secrets, and I gave her a box of cameras.

I meant it though. I wanted her to have them. Wholeheartedly and without a doubt in my head.

It took me all of five seconds to figure out a solution to something that had been crippling me since I put them in that box in the first place. My cameras needed and deserved a new home, and she was the perfect place to abandon them.

I truly believed she had a natural eye for it. The few pictures we'd developed were exactly what I would've done. With a little practice, she could do some really beautiful things—so, why not let her do it? I had no use for them. None. Zero. It wasn't something I would ever do again, and she seemed to need something in her life. Something beautiful and happy and a reason to leave this goddamn place and all the people that fucking did her wrong.

And if I was honest, if I was a good man, those people would include me, because soon enough, she'd see me as a monster as much as she did her mother.

Life was fucked up. There's no doubt. Horrible things happen to people every day. I'd seen it, documented it, been a part of it. But I had people that loved me even though they shouldn't, and it didn't seem as if Bella ever had that.

Maybe that's why she hadn't let that deer go yet. Hadn't made it find its real mother.

And maybe that's why she hadn't let me go either. Persistent from the beginning—always there, always needing something. In my pond. Broken porch. Ride to town. Meltdown.

But I'm the one who took from her, took all she seemed to want to give, until I didn't feel so empty anymore. She crawled into my skin like the ivy poking through her window sills. Punctured my exterior like the sharp nails on her porch. Burned my skin like the sunspot on the fucking picture that turned the whole day upside down in my soul and ended with me taking her to bed so I could feel just a little bit more, ache a little bit less, and maybe take some of her pain away.

My fingers played over the black cup of leather as I contemplated what it would feel like to pull it away for good. Relief? Anguish? Disgust? My insides stabbed, and I decided I wasn't ready to feel anything but the burst of light Bella had seared into me, right there on the crumpled blue sheets that smelled like her and us and what we'd done every night since I got my first taste of her.

She'd gotten up and out of my bed early to shoot again, as she had every morning this week. This time trying my second-oldest camera. The one we'd loaded film in last night while the sex-filled sheets pooled around our naked bodies, still pressed together like one couldn't survive without the other. She didn't tell me where she was off to, just that she'd be back, and it was all I needed to hear.

Those three words filled me with more hope than any other three words had ever done.

The sun stretched out overhead, hot and heavy, with no clouds in sight as I stared at the unicorn-painted side of my house.

"So, what exactly is going on here?" Sam asked, a curious look on his face and his hands on his hips. He'd dropped off the twenty-foot ladder I asked to borrow to reach as much as I could before having to go up on the peak of the attic window ledge to reach the very top.

"Not sure I know, exactly. Couldn't decide on a color and… well, there you go." It was a lie. But I was used to telling them. Sam didn't need to know about the boyish rush I got when I painted it, when I looked at it, like a statement that I was done with reality and the monotone beiges and greens sprinkled with red that got me here.

He didn't need to know that once upon a time, I was so full of art and life, I bled in technicolor.

"Are you planning on this for the whole house? You'll need more paint."

"Nope. Just this side, I think."

He looked at me with a quirked eyebrow. "You might want to freshen up the rest of the white. You know, so it doesn't look so shabby next to this… birthday cake."

I smiled, a real one. I liked this guy. So far, he'd been okay to me, and he seemed to like Bella. "Pick a white. I trust you. Call me when it's in." I hesitated, watched Sam nod his head and pull his truck keys out of his pocket. "Or you could come by with the bill and paint when you get it— stay for a beer or a burger or something." I felt like a tool, like a second-grader asking for a play date.

If Sam found the invite weird, he didn't let on. "Sounds good; I'll throw in the cigars." He left in a cloud of dust down the driveway, nearly hitting Bella who was running at a fast clip towards me. She looked excited and waved at Sam as she jogged around the truck and kept coming towards me before flying into me and wrapping her arms around my neck. My own grabbed her instinctively, and my camera pressed hard between our chests.

"Hi." She was breathless, radiant, sweaty at the temples.

"Hi."

"I took so many pictures, I'm not even sure of what. I went through town and took pictures of people without them seeing, I hope, but I wanted to see if I could do what we discussed. Capturing moving things besides the deer."

"How'd it feel?" I let her down and grabbed her hand, pulling her with me to the porch.

She thought a moment, something I realized I really liked about her. Bella took her time to think about what she really wanted to say. It made me hang on every word like they were going to disappear, poof, into the sunlight and never come back.

"Being behind the camera made me feel invisible." She sat on the step and poured a glass of tea from the floral pitcher. "I felt like I wasn't being stared at because no one could see me. I'm sure that isn't true, but it made me feel anonymous." She took a big gulp and "ahhd" after. "Is it like that for you?"

Without thinking, I answered. "Yes. Not because I wanted to be invisible but because it let me feel like I wasn't intruding on the moment. Wasn't going to ruin it."

"Tell me."

I hesitated. I'd shared so much about this side of me, already more than I was comfortable with. More than I ever thought I'd share with anyone. But Bella made me feel like I could maybe tiptoe in the shallow end, if only for a minute. "When I would look at something with my naked eye, it always felt to me like I was taking something from the subject. Whether it be a person, a plant, a butterfly—hell, even a brick. Like just me seeing it made it act and appear differently. So when the camera was there, it felt to me like a privacy screen. It allowed my subject to reveal the inside, to act the way it wanted to with no fear of anyone seeing its true self. Everything seemed more alive to me through a lens." I glanced at Bella and shrugged. "Sounds dumb when I say it out loud."

"It's not dumb. It's beautiful." I just hummed, lost in thought as Bella gave me a moment. "Why was Sam here?" she eventually asked.

I nodded towards the side of the house. "Ladder. You want help developing?" She didn't need it; she'd been doing it herself for a week now with me just hovering over her shoulder.

"No, you paint. I want to surprise you anyway." Her smile was big and bright and everything I hoped the cameras would bring her. With a quick peck on my cheek, she ran off towards the darkroom, and I physically felt the emptiness she left.

Funny how you don't know you want something until it's just out of reach.

* * *

A couple of days later, I'd gotten as far up the house as I could. I'd been thinking idly of whether or not to do the other side of the house to match, but I didn't want to decide without getting Bella's opinion. The fact I sought it out was surprising, but I rationalized that she'd have to look at it; therefore, she had every right to have an opinion.

Thinking of her made me miss her, so I washed my hands as best I could under the spigot, the blue, red, and yellow paint stuck on my fingernails and in the creases and crevices of each knuckle.

She had the small fan on, its head oscillating lazily and ruffling anything that got in its path. Her hair was up, stuck through with a pencil to keep it in place. Her neck was sweaty, and I stood looking at her for what felt like an eternity, until she felt my presence or looked around longing for me to be there as much as I wanted to be.

"Whatcha got?" I asked, smelling her flowery scent mixed with the chemicals she was using.

"Sit down! I don't want you to see yet." She sounded nervous, like I wouldn't approve of what she'd done. She hadn't shot anything yet that I didn't think was pure beauty, even her hated house photo, but I did what she said and collapsed into the rickety chair two feet away. "I… think I like them. I used the black and white film you loaded, but I'm not sure…"

"Did you adjust the aperture and make sure the ISO was set low if you were outside?"

"Yes and yes."

"Then I'm sure they're perfect." She ducked her head from me but not before I could see the smile growing on her face. _Like you_ , I wanted to say but couldn't quite get my lips to form it.

I continued to watch her work—her hands dipping in and out of the stop bath, her arms and torso reaching above to clip the paper to the clothesline, the meticulous way she measured everything, and how she cleaned up around herself as she went.

Another delicate, floral dress flapped in the fan breeze around her calves, right above the rare pair of sneakers she had on. Those few inches of skin were seductive, reminding me of how they'd been wrapped around my waist just this morning.

Her legs parted as she stepped up on the milk crate she used to see into the enlarger, her dress pulling taut against her thighs, the fluttery fabric rising bit by bit. Her lips pursed as she moved the dials up and down, securing the part of the picture she felt was worthy of printing.

From where I sat in the squeaky desk chair, her waist was at eye level, the elastic holding that dress close to her fresh, pale body but loosely enough that I knew I could get a whole hand up under it if I wanted to.

Her hand was poised, about ready to push the buttons that would cement her choice, but before I gave her a chance, before I knew what had come over me, I'd dropped to my knees in back of her and exhaled, my hands landing on either side of her thighs pushing her skirt up slightly. My breath moved that flimsy cotton, and her hand reached behind to land on my shoulder as she gasped lightly, gripping my sweaty, paint-splattered shirt.

I watched my hand move to the bobby socks she had on like it wasn't attached to me, skimming the cuff and rising slowly up the outside of her leg, soft and silky and so fucking young, even though I knew how much of a woman she truly was. The enlarger she was about to use skidded slightly against the table, a sure sign that I was probably making her nervous, but the hand digging into my shoulder told me a different story.

"Hand off the enlarger," I instructed, and wordlessly, she let go. She gripped the edge of the table as my paint-splattered hands slithered up, up, pushing the hem of her dress a bit with my wrists. The fine hair on her thighs was soft, and I kept on going, pressing my forehead against the back of her knee and circling the backs of her thighs in soothing ripples.

A low moan escaped her before I felt her hand move through my hair, the gripping of her fingers on my shaggy new length made me want to lose control. She didn't press, push, or guide—she allowed, so I nudged that dress up with my head, my mouth making contact with the silk of an inner thigh.

Violets, soap, honeysuckle. Scents that were as familiar to me now as developing chemicals. I was hungry for her, more than I'd ever been for anyone this way, and when she didn't protest, I went further, my fingers rising up to feel the scrap of cotton that was the only thing that stood between me and her under that dress.

I'd had her body multiple times now, but this act was more intimate than anything we'd done, and I wondered if this was something she'd ever received. The way she let me coach her in bed, the way she let me take over, and the way she looked at me—seductive and naive all at the same time—told me no.

Women came and went in my line of work. I was always moving, always leaving, and female company was something I knew from hotel to hotel, not day to day. Having sex was easy, but having intimacy was not, and as much as I was sure Bella had never experienced this before, she'd probably be shocked to know I hadn't either.

"Stop me now if you don't want this," I said against that honeysuckle, and the tug on my hair told me she'd say no such thing. She grew bold then and turned in my grasp, one leg coming up to rest on my shoulder, inviting me to know her like no one had. The pink cotton was rubbish in my strong hands, one side ripping and the other falling to the wayside and down her leg as I tugged, and she let it go. My head was up and under, lips on the part of her skin I was convinced hadn't been pressed against a man this way, so I tried to make it nice, tried to curtail the savage in me, licking and kissing the flesh that grew softer and sweeter the higher I went.

The briefest flicker of uncertainty ran up my spine, telling me that if I did this, if we shared something that was much more than fucking, in my opinion, I'd have her scent and soul swirling in my head long after this was over. It wouldn't just be a good memory—it would be a hole that burned straight through me at the loss of her.

But the selfish asshole in me said "Fuck it." I punished myself every day for the thing I had done. Let another chastisement be a sweet memory instead of a bloody scar.

My tongue brushed up against her heated pussy, and I knew that this was it: I was all in, and she'd better be right behind me.

I forgot about propriety and being gentle, and I licked my deer girl like she was the pure water I hadn't had in months. She buckled, barely able to keep straight, and I pushed her body back against the wood table more forcefully than I should've, so she wouldn't fall.

The response from her was a hungry grunt and tightening of her hand in my hair, driving me on to drink from her like a starved man. I lapped at her, engulfing her cunt, which made her sweet little hand pull at my ear and encourage me on.

I could feel the one leg that supported her giving out as I fed, so I guided her down and off that milk crate until her ass was on the floor, and I was between her thighs, not letting up and not letting go. She started to whimper, long streams of moans that sounded like they were new to her like they were to me. I sucked her hard, moving my hand up between my mouth and her body, trying to hold onto her so I wouldn't float away. This was probably the hottest sexual act I'd ever participated in, and the hardest my cock had ever been in the presence of a woman.

But I knew it wasn't just any woman or because I hadn't done this with anyone. I knew it was because it was her.

My Bella. My fucking weird deer girl, who I might be falling in love with.

She was moving, writhing against the floor with a bare ass, one hand in my hair and the other trying to connect with something. The table leg, the crate, I didn't know what, something maybe to keep her from floating away much like me, but I pulled that hand down and made it join mine against her wet flesh. Her fingers moved against my tongue and I lapped at them as much as I did her until she gave in—an ecstasy I'd not heard before from her that made me feel like a king.

Her stomach heaved, and her thighs shook, knocking my head around, but I stayed there in that honeysuckle until I felt her legs finally give out and slide on either side of me against the dusty floor. She sighed, rasped, purred like a kitten as I panted against her skin, enjoying my own high.

We lay there together until I remembered her photographs, and I pulled her up to stand beside me, flushed and out of breath. Looking at the line of white paper now burned through with what fancied her, my mouth fell open slightly at the images in front of me. Townspeople going about their day like anywhere in America, but her angles and point of view made them jump out, made them alive and moving and somehow much more beautiful than they really were as they gathered their groceries and chatted on the post office steps. There was a haunting sadness that hung on every frame—the way she captured the light as much as the shadow— and I knew Bella was capturing these people as she saw them. As people that had darkened her life and made her feel small.

"These are amazing. Extraordinary." I walked back and forth, looking at them all twice.

"You think so? It was hard to really determine whether or not a shot was worth taking."

"What do you mean? Every shot is worth taking."

"Well, the film. It's expensive, and I know you have to order away for it so…"

"You were worried about wasting film?"

"Yes."

"Unless the subject is me, no shot is ever a waste. It's just not maybe what you envisioned it to be. But definitely never a waste. Don't ever worry about that."

"I didn't want to run out though, either. If I had taken everything I wanted, I wouldn't have gotten that one." She pointed to the last one in the row.

It was a beautiful shot. She'd captured a pair of identical twins, not more than four years old, both with skinned knees, sitting on the steps outside the grocery, licking each other's lollipops.

My next thought hit me like a thunderbolt. It seared my insides and left ash inside me. But I ignored that pathetic dust and pulled on her hand.

"I know what camera you need to learn next. Come on."

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	27. Chapter 27

**Chapter 27**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

When I was eleven, I read a story about a girl lost at sea.

I'd never seen the ocean, but I could imagine it. The prairie had been underwater once, and the ghost of it was still trapped here. Sometimes, if you squinted your eyes in just the right light, at the right time of day, the grass rolled like waves under the hot breath of the wind, and the air smelled like salt. It was easy enough to wander out into the fields, where the horizon was flat and the sky was the only thing for miles, to imagine I was floating somewhere too far from land to see the shoreline.

It was the photo of her that stuck with me the most, the details of her story lost over time. A shot snapped from the bow of a boat that happened to stumble across her, a tiny blonde needle in a big endless blue haystack. I couldn't even remember what had gotten her into that tiny life raft, or what tragedy had forced her into the open water. I couldn't remember her name or where exactly her ship was sunk. I do remember she was followed by dolphins and had her legs bitten by parrot fish, and she thought the boat that eventually rescued her was a whale, floating up above the water. There she was, a blip of color on a blank background of blue, her legs hoisted out of the water, and the raft half sunk beneath her.

She didn't even look happy to be rescued.

I supposed at that point, after a week in the water with nothing but fear holding you to life, it was hard to be happy about anything.

I lay in Edward's bed, a tiny life raft in the middle of my endless ocean, adrift in the way only a shipwreck can cause. I could hear him outside, a steady _swish swish swish_ of his brush against the house and a hum in his throat that I almost recognized, some old, lamenting rock ballad about love and loss. He was surely getting sunburned, the afternoon hot and humid, another storm descending. I was sticky and feverish and fumbling toward some kind of ecstasy, the memory of his skin, his breath, his tongue in places I'd never even imagined. The push of his nose and the tug of his fingers. The groan in his chest like a reverberation through my bones. The lap and suck and kisses he placed between my legs as though I was a temple, and he was on his knees, worshipping something unseen but fully felt.

The light in his eye, the wet on his face, the new place we'd stumbled into together, as though we'd found a trail after years of wandering lost in a million mile wilderness.

He wasn't letting go. Neither was I.

I hadn't been home since that day, that afternoon, the one Edward jokingly referred to as "the remodel," with an uptick at the edge of his mouth and a wink. Letting it feel so light was better than allowing it to become a hole in the bottom of my life raft, so I'd just shake my head and fake scowl at him.

He called me "Bella." Called me "babe." Called me "beautiful." I wasn't entirely convinced he was right, but I let him think it all anyway.

We'd found a rhythm that was oddly domestic, almost comfortable. Coffee in the mornings over silence and early sunshine. Dishes and showers and cleaning out the upstairs bathroom. He hung more of his photographs on the walls: pictures of children playing in the dirt or of trees being blown sideways by the wind, of skyscrapers and sunrises. Between the paint and the photos, between the coffee and the crumpled bed sheets, his house was slowly coming alive again. _He_ was slowly coming alive again.

Judging by the faint spark of contentment blossoming in my chest, maybe I was too.

I had the digital camera on my stomach, breathing under the heavy weight. It was a beast. Heavy and cumbersome and beautiful. Edward had given me a brief tutorial, barely even looking at the camera, finishing up by telling me my natural talent would help me figure it out.

This was _the_ camera. The camera that had turned him into a snake flower. The one that had sent him into a rage and sent me running through the fields. I was scared to awaken it, sure that the black beast was a dragon left slumbering for too long, hungry and confused when it woke, breathing fire and brimstone.

I turned the camera on, a soft purr against my insides as it sprung to life. Left it resting on my stomach and took a photo without sight, just feeling. The bare wall punched through with the open window, the sunshine through the open panes gobbling up the shadows. Took another of my feet, twisted up in his sheets. One of the wall with the sad, yawning mouth of the doorway, dark hall just beyond. One of the faint bruise on my thigh, puckered just like his mouth, as though he'd been biting down to hold on while his hand was busy exploring my neck, my breasts, and my mouth, the other hand buried between my legs.

He told me that the best part about this camera was the screen. The big, black flat of glass on the back that showed you the photo you had just taken. That they could be kept, or deleted, just like that. That nothing was wasted on shots that didn't look right.

I pressed the back arrow, deleting everything but the bruise, delighted by the new form of control. My finger slipped against a knob, and the screen guttered, the image shifting. I blinked, staring at the camera in confusion, at an image there I hadn't shot.

A helicopter.

Blades to the sky, squatting territorially over a group of men in army fatigues. They wore backpacks. Carried giant guns. Plastered with smiles that looked forced and sweat that wasn't, stone-faced and cold-eyed.

Another flick of that knob.

A face I recognized, wide smile and brown eyes and buzzed dark hair. Emmett. The brother from the anniversary photo, looking so much like Edward, there was no mistaking him. Firm jaw and dimples and creases at the corners of his eyes.

Emmett, stepping into the helicopter.

Emmett, helmet on, gun in his lap, looking through the open side of the helicopter at a barren landscape far below.

Emmett, coming through a cloud of dust, crouching as he ducked out of the helicopter's spinning blades.

A tent. A table cluttered with the remains of a group dinner.

A desert. Could be here, could be there, could be anywhere kind of desert, except for the man in a turban and his scraggly goats scrounging the bare bushes.

Edward.

My heart hammered.

His whole face. Smiling behind an outstretched hand, as though someone had picked up his camera and turned it on him. Just like he did to me, his one-sided love for the camera caught all up behind it, ever the taker and never the subject.

No helmet. No stoic mask. No eyepatch.

I studied his face for a long time, the square set of his jaw, and the teeth he showed behind that grin. The dimples that appeared as his mouth pulled wide. The hair that flopped across his forehead.

His eyes.

Both of them.

Deep and green and far less haunted than those of the Edward I knew.

I flicked the knob again, and my heart ground to a skidding dust, dirt, and skinned-knees stop. I'd been hurtling down a hill on a bicycle not made for me, on flattened tires and rusted brakes, and I crash-landed at the bottom in a crumpled pile of bone, blood, and empty-stomach regret.

Emmett's face again.

Cheek to a dirty, crumpled American flag. Eyes open to the sky, empty and staring. Skin splattered with blood. His helmet blown open: a sickening, empty hole where the side of his neck should have been. His bottom lip limp against his teeth, and I could all but feel the last breath as it rushed through the camera and hit me square in the heart.

I trembled, wanting so badly to throw that camera away, far away from me, but I was unable to let go of my death grip. Emmett's empty stare had me riveted, terribly transfixed, and my heart pounded in my ears as I studied the picture. He had a freckle by his eye, lost amid a spray of blood. There was a few days worth of stubble on his face. Tired, grey smudges beneath his eyes. Blood dripping from his nose.

A tear tracking a clean line across his dusty cheek.

The last moment his soul was there in his body.

"Hey."

I choked back a scream as Edward's face appeared in the open window, hands wrapped around the ledge and a beautiful smile on his face. He'd been doing more and more of that lately. Smiling. It made something behind my ribs ache fiercely.

"You okay?" he asked, the smile faltering. I was sure I looked like I was about to be sick. Like I was having trouble breathing. Like I had seen a ghost. I nodded, but the lump in my throat was so big, I couldn't breathe around it, a burning meteor trapped in my windpipe.

"Yeah," I said, the word sounding more like a question than it should have.

"I'm done for the day. Hamburgers for dinner?"

I blinked at him. Such an unassuming thing to say—he had no idea I felt like I was holding a supernova to my chest. I set the camera beside me in the sheets, gently, and nodded.

Edward tucked a leg over the window and slipped gracefully inside, making it look too easy. Shirtless and paint-flecked and sunbaked, smiling at me something fierce. He pulled me up from the mattress, all hands clutching me up close.

"You're pretty when you're thinking." He rubbed his nose along my neck, mumbling words into my skin. "Tell me. Tell me what's going on up there, pretty girl."

"You've got heat stroke." I laughed, hands to his red cheeks, the tips of my fingers looping through the strap of his eyepatch. The urge to tug, to pull it down, was so strong. Some kind of panicked curiosity welled up in my throat. I could smell his sweat and the paint and that eternal, hungry heartache he carried around with him.

He let me slide all the way down him as he set me back on the floor. With a press of his lips to mine, he walked out the door.

I followed him down the stairs and stood in front of the anniversary photo for a long time, studying the brother I knew Edward loved so deeply that it was etched into his face. Everyone was so happy. Edward's mother, small and slim, smiling back at the grin her husband was giving her, a tall, blonde man with deep-set eyes and that strong jaw I liked so much on Edward. The brother smiling over his shoulder as he mooned the camera. So carefree, if it was taken out of context.

I would never be able to look at this photo the same way ever again.

The fawn danced in through the open door, clicking across the hardwood to press her face to my leg. My fingers found her ears in a thoughtless caress as I listened to Edward's footsteps in the kitchen, the water from the tap. The paint swirling down the drain, his hands folded together beneath the water with soap bubbles and the tiny canyons in his skin. The soft, dark places he had pulled away inside of himself. The anger that he'd slapped over it like a Band-Aid holding all of his guts in.

The air felt too heavy to breathe.

I was going to burst out of my skin.

"Bella?"

"I'm here," I croaked, padding into the kitchen, headed for the sink. I washed my hands while he bustled around the kitchen, pulling out food to feed me, even though I had no appetite. Emmett's face kept flashing in my head, the blood and the tear and the dust and that helpless, forlorn look in his eyes. I scrubbed harder.

"About have the whole wall done," Edward told me, chopping away with a big butcher knife at the counter, blissfully unaware that I was about to ruin everything. I sat at the kitchen table and pulled my knees up to my chin, something in my gut burning sulfur guilt. I couldn't let it go. Couldn't let it slide away, the image forever burned on me, and I could practically see it burned on him too.

So what if I was falling in love? This was what people did. People without holes in them that were the exact shape of a bullet. The exact shape of a land mine. People without walls, without moats, without barbed wire or border patrols. I supposed I had it in me, the capacity, only because I could feel it, a fire in my gut and a burning behind my eyes and a throbbing beneath my ribs. But love never came easy—it always had a price, and I was starting to wonder how much he would cost, how much Edward might cost me, if I closed my eyes and jumped into the water.

Puncturing my life raft on the way down.

"Were you in the army?"

Edward stopped chopping, his mouth pulling down as he glanced at me, a quick look before his gaze skittered away again. He let out a long, slow breath.

"No."

I didn't know anything about war. Didn't know the rules. Didn't know the names or the ranks or what anyone really did, but it was obvious. The camo jacket in his attic and the old worn boots by the door and the camera full of death. I tried again.

"The military?"

"Why?"

He knew. I could tell he already knew, even without me saying it out loud. His voice was sharp and steel-edged, his shoulders stiff and his hands gone still. I traced the wood pattern of the tabletop with one finger, my heart beating hard enough to kill me, palms clammy and skin too tight.

"The camera. The digital. There were pictures on it. From…" I faltered. I didn't know where those photos had been taken. Didn't know why or how or when. All I knew was that looking at them had punched a hole right through me. Even though I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to actually take such images myself, I was staring down the aftermath.

Edward inhaled shaky and uneven. His face went slack and ashen, and his grip on the knife clamped down hard before he turned and launched the blade, fast as a snake, with a roar in his throat.

I yelped, ducking, even though I was nowhere in the line of fire. The fawn, dozing under the table, leapt to her feet with a frightened squeal, scrambling for me and shoving her head beneath my knee. The knife stuck hard and fast into the plaster by the door, quivering in the wall. Edward was staring at it, wide-eyed and panting.

"I didn't..." he choked, "I didn't know those were still on there."

I licked my lips and opened my mouth.

"You should go," he said, talking to the knife.

"I don't want to." My voice wobbled, even as my body turned itself into a ten thousand pound weight. I wouldn't be moved. Wouldn't be forced away. Not when he looked like that. Not when the sunlight was fading so fast. I didn't flinch or blink or even breathe, waiting for him to say something, do something, anything.

"I'm not…" he huffed, shaking his head. "I'm not… good, Bella. Not for you."

"Will you ever be?"

He laughed hard and mean, his whole body shaking. "Probably not."

"Then it doesn't matter. None of it matters. Not to me." I tried desperately to patch the wound I'd just blown open and staunch the bleeding—pressure, tourniquet, prayers.

Everything felt so useless.

"It does matter," he spit. "And it's none of your fucking business."

"I'm sorry, but I'm staying." I pressed down harder, gripping the edge of the chair.

"I'm just going to hurt you."

"Maybe."

He cut his eyes at me, rough and broken and mean. When he scowled, it looked like warfare. Like a battlefield, strung through with landmines and barbed wire, and I wasn't sure I could survive him. He seemed to wither and grow, all at the same time, an inward shrink even as he straightened, his jaw clenching.

"I don't want you! I don't want you here." He bared his teeth at me, cornered and feral and hissing. "Just go and take that fucking deer with you."

Blood splattered across my face. Gore in my mouth. Guts in my eyes.

I stood, the soles of my feet barely registering the floor. I felt like I was going to float away. Like _he_ was going to float away. Only moments ago I had been upstairs in his bed, remembering the sounds of his legs rustling through the sheets and the way he breathed when he slept, and now he was telling me to leave.

I took four silent steps toward the door and stopped, staring at the knife buried in the wall, thinking about the bullet burning a hole in my pocket. My palm wrapped the handle, and I tugged the knife free, setting it down on the counter.

With one last look at him, I stepped out the door and into the sunlight.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter 28**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

After Bella left, after I _bullied_ her to leave, I stood for a long time at the kitchen sink. I'd answered only one of her questions, and then I lashed out before shutting down completely.

She tried to warm me up when she saw it beginning, tried to soothe the beast I'd let surface. She was so good, so loving—it only reminded me of how much better she could do without me in the picture. With some other man in her life to love her and care for her like I was incapable of doing. Just like I thought I was eventually going to do, I knew I'd hurt her as soon as the words left my mouth. I just didn't think I'd do it so soon. The look on her face when I snapped that it was none of her fucking business was almost enough to make me run after her and pull her in my arms, confessing all of my dirty sins to her and begging her not to leave me.

Almost.

Instead, I gripped the chipped porcelain and broken formica until my fingers ached, and I knew they'd creak in pain once I released them.

I felt shitty for hurting her. Worse than shitty. I felt some of the old shame I thought I'd shaken rise up in my throat like bile. I felt shitty for not telling her, too. For not trusting her—instead, flipping the switch on all the good we'd had growing to the point where I feared I wouldn't get it back.

I wanted it back. I wanted _her_ back. I knew it as soon as I'd told her to go. Back in my house, in my arms, in my bed, in my burgeoning reality of dreams instead of nightmares. I only felt good when she was near me, and I'd just thrown a knife straight through that.

There was only one person I could think of who didn't hate me and knew the truth of what I'd done, and I'd been avoiding her for selfish reasons. She had to be in pain, had to be hurting as much as I was, but I'd turned my back and fallen into this dream world of an existence with an isolated house and a kooky neighbor, without a thought to the woman who got me here in the first place.

I needed to call Rose.

My fingers did protest in pain as I unfurled them and reached for the phone. The metal burned my skin, and the screen stared at me blankly, waiting for action. Before I could change my mind and drown in my hundredth tubful of self-loathing, I hit her number and waited through half a ring before her unmistakably anxious voice filled my ear.

"Edward? Are you okay?"

I closed my eye in guilt at the fact that she assumed that something was horribly wrong for me to call. "Yeah, it's me."

"What's going on?"

I said the first thing I thought of. Something I should've said a long time ago. "I'm sorry."

"For what? Calling? You didn't disturb me, just reading."

"No, Rose. I'm _sorry_." My voice cracked, full of the dread and pain and all the fucked up things I said and did to her. There was silence on the other end after her sharp intake of breath. I waited for her to say something, anything, but nothing came. "I'm so so sorry, Rose."

Her voice was calm, mellow. "I forgave you a long time ago, Edward."

"But I never said it. I never said, 'I'm sorry.' And I am. I'm so fucking sorry." A sob I hadn't known was captured in my chest came out in a whimper. My hand covered my mouth instinctively, trying to keep it in, like I had for months now.

"I know you are."

Silence between us while she waited for me to continue. I had so much to say, so much swirling around my head, but I chose the one thing that had been eating at me the most. "How did you ever forgive me? How did you even want to ever see me again, let alone help me?"

She sighed. "I love you. _He_ loved you. You were hurt by… it… as much as I was. How could I not be there for you? Not be there for my husband's brother whom I love like my own?"

"I should've been the one there for you. And you should hate me for what I did."

"You didn't fucking kill him, Edward. And I told you," Rose said, her voice taking on the stern parent tone she'd used with me the night I finally decided to let her in and help me. "You hated yourself enough for both of us."

Her words stung. Cut and shot through me like a bullet. I knew they were true, but it didn't make me any less guilty of a horrific crime. But hearing them, I knew she believed them. Rose would never bullshit you—on that, she was reliable. I sagged against the counter. "I did."

"Did? Past tense?" The surprise and hopefulness in her voice was obvious. "Put the real Edward on the phone, please."

Leave it to her to turn discomfort and anxiety into humor. "I _think_ it's me. I've been feeling… better."

"I'm happy to hear that, truly. Is it the house? You're comfortable there?"

I wiped at my eye with the back of my fist. "The house is great. I'm painting it."

"That sounds good. It needed it. How's the eye?"

My fingers touched the leather. "I don't know. The patch is still on."

"Edward! You were supposed to take that off weeks ago."

"I know."

"Why haven't you?"

"I don't know," I lied.

"You're not helping yourself. You'll never be able to—"

"I know," I repeated dumbly, cutting her off from saying what I know she wanted most in the world, besides Emmett coming back. But it was something that would never happen.

Rose let it go, thankfully. "So what else is new? The house is being painted; what else?"

My bare toe skirted around the crack in the black and white vinyl tile, debating what to say. To say it out loud made it real. "I met someone."

Silence again. I pictured Rose's mouth open and her eyes wide, an image that made my heart warm. I smiled slightly, missing her. "A girl?"

"A deer." I felt my face heat. "And maybe a girl."

"I want to hear about the deer sometime, but tell me about the girl first."

How to describe Bella? "She's strange. And broken. And kind of unrealistic. But for some reason, she likes me."

"There's a lot to like about you."

"Less than there used to be. I don't deserve her."

"Don't, Edward," Rose snapped suddenly. "Don't deny yourself something else that makes you happy because you feel like you need to punish yourself for the rest of your life. You need to forgive yourself. You _need_ to. Or you're going to eat yourself alive and join Emmett in the ground. And I, for one, can't go through burying another person I love. You owe it to me, to him, to be happy. You know he forgives you, too."

With those words, my face crumpled, and I finally slumped on the floor in front of the cabinets. Rose let me cry... let me sob. The first real display of human emotion I'd had since my violent outburst and drunken rampage in her living room, before I finally accepted her help. Enough of it, anyway, to get me sobered up and wanting to etch out some thin facade of a life.

Choking on my own heartbreak, I stayed silent as I tried to embrace what she said. "I know he does—that's what's fucked up. So fucked up." I wiped my nose on my t-shirt and inhaled Bella's scent, still lingering there like a ghostly cobweb long after a spider has abandoned it.

"Life is fucked up."

"Rose, she has no idea how fucked up _I_ am."

"If she's put up with you this long, she must see something in you." She chuckled a little. "If you can find someone to be fucked up with, you should hold onto it and never let it go."

"How, Rose? How can you be so fucking strong after what happened? How do you not want to crawl out of your skin and disappear?"

"I ache, Edward, of course I do. But Emmett and I knew this could be a possibility someday. Doesn't take away one minute I spent with him. I would do it all over again knowing the outcome."

"I miss him, Rose. I miss him so much."

"Me too. I miss his big, goofy face and the way he could belch 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.'"

That made us both laugh, and I felt a lightness in my chest. I had the urge to tell Bella that story. "Do you talk… about him?"

"Every chance I get. Hell, I talk _to_ him. Tell him about my day. It helps."

"How do I…"

"Tell this girl you still haven't given me a name for about him?"

"No." I swallowed thickly and shut my eyes. "About what I did."

Rose inhaled deeply. "You tell her the facts, _not_ your version of it, and let her see it for what it is herself."

I thought of Bella sitting and listening to the ugliness that lived within me every day. Thought about showing her the evidence in the attic that kept the blanket of despair over me like a shroud hiding mummified remains.

And all I could see was her holding my hand and looking at me with her big, brown eyes full of kindness.

"Bella. Her name is Bella."

* * *

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 **HB &PB**


	29. Chapter 29

**Hey guys! HB and PB here.**

 **Seems there was a problem logging into FF last chapter. Unfortunately, people thought they were logged in but actually weren't, and a lot of your reviews came in as 'guest' so we couldn't reply. Just know that we read and appreciate every single word you send us.**

* * *

 **Chapter 29**

~Bella~

* * *

The moment my feet touched the grass, I ran.

I felt like I was always running, always running away. From my house. From my mom. From my reality. From him.

For the first time in my entire life, I felt like I was running in the wrong direction.

I wanted to run back, wanted so badly to run back to him, but the knife and that devastated look on his face kept me going. I knew enough about that kind of wreckage to recognize that now wasn't the time for me to wish myself back into his good graces. He needed space. He needed to throw things. More things. He needed to rage, scream, or cry, and I didn't think he'd do any of that in front of me.

The shed felt darker than normal—stiff, as though we were all holding our breath together. A flash of Emmett's face in my head again and I clutched my chest, panting from my sprint across the yard. A mess—that's what they called people like him. A downright mess.

And here I was, a dirty smudge on pristine snow.

I mindlessly set up to develop, an act that had become comfortingly normal in the last few weeks. We'd run through most of my film, and I searched for an undeveloped roll, coming up empty. The box we had used to store all the film canisters was lightweight and empty. I scanned the workspace, stacks of photo paper, and bottles of stop bath before I spotted it.

A film canister, set high on a shelf, all by itself.

I didn't even bother to look at the shots. Just clipped the film and started dipping, my heart still aching something fierce, hands desperate for something to do.

I hung the first one up on the line, a messy smudge of nothing. Some might call it a waste, but I stood staring at it for a long while, thinking about that digital camera. The one that had become such a problem child. I should take it and bury it with the gun, for all it had brought me. Sure, I could delete photos that might be deemed wasted, but there was some strange sort of beauty in a mistaken shot. There were so many colors there, the fade of something moving too fast for the camera to keep up with.

The next shot caught my heart up in my throat.

It was him. Head in the flowers, hand on his chest, that smile on his face—the easy, beautiful one. Caught unaware and in the moment.

I'd forgotten. It felt like years ago—entire lifetimes—those photos I'd tried to snap of him in the grass back when this was new and he was harder, and I was still lingering along the line of curiosity and self-doubt. A few more moments, and I had a chaotic tumble of shots strung on a wire. They were mostly of my palm, snippets of my smile, dashes of my cheeks. An eye. Swatches of my hair. All through the maze of my blurry fingers, reaching out to stop him.

A bunch of fractured pieces of me, all in a row.

I couldn't fix him. I knew this. He was broken in places that stayed broken. In ways that couldn't be mended, and I couldn't even wish for enough wishes to set him free. His smile lines were really ruptured fault lines. His scars were just crippled bridges and damaged roads, and I had a minefield to make it across before I could reach him.

I didn't know what would happen then.

I knew what was coming, even as I snipped and dunked and hung the next strip of film. The photos he'd taken of me, camera perched gingerly on his stomach like he couldn't bear looking through it, a single finger balancing the button like he couldn't stand touching it.

Clarity ached like a heart attack, I thought.

A tight clench around my ribs that felt like how dying must feel. I'd never seen myself like this. The way he captured me. Even without looking. Even without touching, foregoing all the adjustments he'd taught me, skipping the slight fondle into perfection. Even without all that, he'd done something magical. Framed me, lit me, imprinted me onto the face of eternity like I was something much bigger than just some girl in some prairie wearing little more than flowers.

There was a shot of my face—all dusky profile—the fawn tugged close, the sky blazing sunset. Another of my hands, fingers threading through fur. The slow, sloping curve of my back, my dress pooled at my hips. The curl of my foot and the lace hem of the dress sprawling through the grass.

The curve of my breast.

The corner of my mouth.

My heart clenched tighter. I couldn't stand it anymore.

I tore the pictures off the line, clutching them to my chest, and flung us all out of the shed.

He was slouched on the porch, feet on the steps, head in his hands. A bottle sat beside him, something I'd watched him slowly nurse for weeks from the single cut crystal tumbler, forgotten in the back corner of a cabinet, etched in flowers. There had been a set of them, his whiskey and her gin, sweating on the porch railings every afternoon.

There was no crystal tumbler tonight. Just the bottle and him, barefoot and slumped.

I tiptoed two steps toward him, stopping at the bottom step with a clench in my gut like I was edging up to a lion—not sure if he'd purr into my neck or rip my face off.

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 **HB &PB**


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

Tell her the facts.

That's the advice Rose had for me. She'd proven to me over the years that she was usually right, but to tell Bella—this pure, innocent, and trusting girl—about the horror of what lived inside me every day? What clung to me and eroded my insides like a coal miner's black lung? Why would I do that to her? She had her own shit in life for sure, and I wasn't downplaying that, but could I really add more to her already fucked-up life and build on the corrosive spot in her heart that already existed?

But when I thought of _not_ telling Bella, of living here for the foreseeable future and unable to give her everything in me because of what lay over my soul like tornado clouds, I didn't see how that would ever be possible. How _we_ would ever be possible with my secret heartache between us. It wouldn't be long until she was sick of it, of me, of all the things that woke me up screaming. The questions that met her with nothing but silence.

A third choice, the smart choice, was to leave. Without a word. I'd take my few belongings and hitchhike down the road until I didn't know what state I would end up in, all in the middle of the night, leaving her with nothing but an attic full of camera equipment she could do whatever she wanted with.

Maybe she'd be so mad she'd throw it all out the window like she did her own belongings. Maybe that's the way this all should end anyway. A pile of broken nightmares stretched out across the field, waiting for the earth to swallow them whole and drag them to the pits of hell.

Despite the solid plan forming in my head, I sat there, looking over the field, sipping from my bottle of whiskey, and called her to me soundlessly. Willing her to forgive me, willing her to come back and ask. Because if she asked, I don't think I'd deny her.

Another good reason for me to just go. I laughed bitterly and held my head in my hands. Save her now, before it was too late.

Because I knew.

 _Bella_.

I knew I needed her.

 _Bella_.

And I knew I loved her.

A rustle in the grass sounded as soon as I'd admitted that to myself, and I closed my eyes and dropped my chin to my chest.

I didn't have to look to know it wasn't the deer.

She said nothing as she walked up to my porch tentatively, like she was trying not to wake a sleeping animal. Her dress rustled slightly as she sat, and her hands tucked themselves underneath her thighs, pressing against the wood.

"You don't scare me," she said. "I understand anger. Better than anyone."

I dragged my hands over my face, through my hair, down the back of my neck and sighed. "It's not just anger."

"It's pain."

"It's pain," I agreed. "A pain I brought on myself."

"Let me share it." She took the bottle from the step and took a swig. I took my own and placed it back down, resting it between our feet.

The fact she had the courage to approach me—to want to know after the anger she'd seen from me—made my thoughts of running away shameful. I stole a look at her, her face open and waiting. I wanted to kiss her one last time before she decided I was not someone she could live with, but I turned away, instead, and looked out over the black field.

"You've seen the pictures on the wall, in the attic. Mountains, flowers, rivers. You've seen the happy people going about their day, smiling for my camera." She nodded next to me but said nothing. "That's how I started my career. You know those books you have in your room? The pretty ones with the places most people only ever dream of going? That was me. That's what I did. I was a photographer. And I was really, really good at it. I bet some of my pictures are in your books."

Her eyes were wide when I glanced at her and pulled the bottle back to my lips. I knew it sounded impressive, dreamy, a wonderful way to make your way in life because it _was_. And I should've stayed in that world and never looked for anything else.

"The money is in the beautiful and the joy. Money is in the pictures in those glossy books that lay on coffee tables and get framed for walls. But the _fame_ ," I took a swig, "the fame comes from the grit. And I wanted the fame more than anything."

"You don't seem the type to want any attention at all."

"I don't, not now, but _then_? I wanted to play with the big boys. The photographers who were getting front page placement. The ones who were getting the glory and the press. The guys making the covers of important magazines who were looked up to like they were rock stars. So I started going after the human interest stories, then the freelance war correspondent gigs."

"Sounds scary."

"It was thrilling." Part of me still felt it thrilling down to my bones, my heart jumping at the memory of adrenaline rushes while walking through clouds of concrete dust and gunfire. "I felt like I was a part of things. Remember how we talked about just observing? Not getting in the way of a moment?" Bella nodded. "Well, this was completely different. I was right there, in the middle of it all. I ran side by side with the troops. I jumped out of airplanes. I dodged and ducked and fought with the best of them. My weapon, however, was a camera."

I picked up the bottle but didn't sip, just started picking at the corner of the label. "I photographed war-torn Croatia, Iraq, Lebanon—anywhere there was strife and battle, I was there. I became the number one guy to call because I never said no, and I got the shots they wanted. I thought nothing about risking my life and got the harrowing, the brutal, the inside look at what was really going on in the battlefield."

I laughed bitterly and took a long drink. "I got my covers, my front pages. But it wasn't enough. I wanted to be on _every_ cover. _Every_ front page. I wanted to be considered the best photojournalist that ever lived."

Standing, I took the three steps down the porch and stopped, my bare feet in the dirt. Bella was still and quiet, waiting as I paced in a circle.

"Emmett was US Army, 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, First Lieutenant, stationed out of Fort Worth." I'd read it so many times in all the casualty listings I couldn't stop reading. I'd never forget his role.

"When I got the call to cover his area in the Zabul province of Afghanistan, I jumped at the chance to go since I hadn't seen him in months, and I missed him, but really because I knew it was the hottest assignment going. I was working out of the same base, so we spent a lot of time together for a few weeks. Some of those… pictures you saw were from that time. There was a lot of 'hurry up and wait,' so we had a lot of downtime. We'd get drunk, bullshit about everything, and when it was time to work, we worked hard.

"Emmett was fearless." I felt a smile begin on my face, thinking of my baby brother jumping out of trees as a kid, picking up the garden snakes and field mice we'd stumble upon in our adventures, holding the rope swing with one hand as he launched himself over the swimming hole. "He wouldn't have a second thought before going down an unsafe foxhole to fish out the enemy or run into a building in the middle of hostile fire. And I followed him every step of the way." The air in our field was quiet as my feet started moving back and forth, mimicking walking over rubble and dead bodies. No crickets sang, no bullfrogs dared to croak—all of them holding their breath like Bella, bracing themselves for the impact sure to come.

"It was a Thursday, about noon. We'd gotten the intel that a pocket of insurgents had holed up in an old pottery manufacturing warehouse. There was nothing unusual about it, but of course, Emmett and I both couldn't wait to get our gear on. Jeeps drove us and his troop out about a mile away from sight of the place, and we hoofed it over sand and dirt and rocks to take cover behind a bombed-out, concrete building." My fingers started moving by themselves, focusing and readying the ghost of a camera. "I remember it clearly. I took a picture of a young kid, maybe nineteen, scared shitless but keeping his game face on, following Emmett, and listening for orders. He looked at Emmett like I did, like we were fucked, but we were trusting this guy with our lives because we knew he was the one who would get us out of whatever we were about to get into."

I hunched my back in memory and stared off in the distance while I replayed snapping away. "I always had to follow carefully, obviously. I had no weapons. I was an observer. But I pushed the limits and got in the thick of it with them. No one ever said Edward Cullen pussied out to get his pictures. No one got the up-close images I did or got better shots than I did. _No one_." I felt myself drifting, careening towards the hot, unforgiving desert. Lost in thoughts and images I'd woken screaming from for months.

"Emmett gave the sign, and they started raining bullets on the warehouse. Just rounds and rounds of ammo flying out of their guns, shells bouncing off the guy next to you, the noise… I can't even describe the noise. It was like being caught in a metal pipe with rocks being constantly hurled at the outside while an engine roared inside, strapped to your chest.

"It stopped at one point, and we waited. Eerie silence met us for a good two minutes, and next I knew, Emmett and his men were flying across the ground, staying as low as possible, and I followed right behind. When we reached the warehouse, the devastation inside was horrific. Bodies everywhere, bloody parts of hands, legs, heads, things you didn't recognize, just dripping with gore. You could taste it.

"The guys did their recon while I took my pictures. Things no one should ever see, but there I was because it was what I did best, better than anybody." The memory takes over, and I'm there, in the chaos. I hold my hand up to my eye, the one covered in leather. "I'm taking a picture of a child, a boy, his hand still holding a rifle even though his arm has separated from his body, when I hear a 'pop' and automatically duck. The guys scramble, and I've lost sight of Emmett. They start firing at a corner, and a few shots get fired back, but it gets confusing, I'm not sure whose bullets are flying over my head." My body got lower to the ground, and my fingertips trailed in the dirt.

"The baby-faced soldier—the one that looked so scared—he's got blood running down his face, but he's talking, yelling, and pointing at something. I climb over two bodies covered in debris, and I get to the other side, where the kid is pointing.

"One of our guys had been hit. That's always bad, but in my eye, I didn't see him as anyone's brother, son, or husband. I saw him as opportunity." My throat clenched, and my skin burned. "He'd landed perfectly on a piece of one of the American flags the boys always carried, ready to wave in victory for my lens. It was perfect."

I was now crouched over his dead body, bullets flying right past my ear, even though I was still in my Kansas field. "I thought of nothing but the sure-to-be-impressive picture I was about to get." I could smell the gunpowder, the blood, hear the cries and the falling rocks.

"What you saw on that camera was the last picture I ever took."

Somewhere next to me, I heard Bella's ragged intake of air. "I don't have to see it ever again to remember every horrific detail. My brother lying in rubble, eyes blank, and half his neck blown off. I can see the dirt streak under his right eye. I can see the wrinkle in his combats right under his name tag. I can see the old hole left in his ear from a foolish night off during basic training."

My fingers hovered over an imaginary object, their tips cold as ice ran through my veins. This was the moment that was sure to do me in. This would make Bella run screaming from me. I looked her in the eye, still in position on the ground, the sick part of me wanting to see her face change from one of pity to one of horror. "You know what's burned into my brain more than anything else in that picture, Bella? Do you really want to know?"

She looked frightened, nervous, but she was still with me, and with a nod of her head, I let out my deepest, darkest secret. The one only Rosalie knew. "Seared in my memory more than anything is the picture of his wife, Rosalie, that he always carried, peeking out of his right breast pocket. You know why?"

She didn't move.

"Because _I'm_ the one that pulled it out. So I could get the best goddamn picture of my life. The picture that would finally land me the grandest prize of them all. The Pulitzer."

I could feel my face crumple and twist, snarling with the bile of my actions I'd poured over my entire soul and was now letting out onto the dirt and grass. "But you know what's even worse than that?"

I hesitated. My throat was scratched and burned. My voice, dead. "After I took that picture, Emmett took a breath. A gasping, clawing, pitiful gasp of air—and it lives with me every day—the thought that if I'd just fucking helped him, instead of going for that picture, maybe he'd be alive today.

"And that's why I will never, ever take a photo again."

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	31. Chapter 31

**Chapter 31**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

Never again.

We sat side by side under the stars and the trees, silent together for a long while. He passed the bottle to me, and I passed it back, and we didn't touch or talk or move until the fawn came loping through the dark. She trotted up the steps straight to Edward. I watched him loop his arm around the animal, her soft cheek pressed up into his chest as she blinked dreamily at me. His hand found her neck and swept gentle strokes down her side as she sighed in contentment and flopped her ears like another creature might have wagged a tail. He rested his chin on the top of her head, glum and sullen.

He'd fallen for her, whether he wanted to or not.

I chewed on my lips and knitted my fingers and traced the wood patterns with my toes while I thought, trying my hardest not to look at him. Despite his conviction, the fawn told me that he was capable of changing his mind.

 _Never, ever again_.

"Never," I finally said, hoping it sounded like a question.

Edward just stared at his feet and rubbed the fawn and didn't say anything. I took a deep breath and stepped into his territory.

"Here's the thing… nature doesn't need a witness." I flipped my hand toward the dark, the world just beyond it so heavy we could have been anywhere, if you pretended hard enough. "The mountains, the trees, the ocean. It just does its thing regardless of whether anyone would even notice. And it's been doing it forever."

I glanced at him.

Nothing.

"But we're different as humans," I plowed on, not even sure where I was going with this, fumbling blindly down his long, dark hallway in search of a light switch. "We're so… brief. And breakable. And we do such terrible, beautiful things to each other. To nature. We need a witness. We need to be held accountable for the bad things and reminded of the good ones." I looked at him again. "We need you."

He exploded.

"I'm a gore monger," he spat, face twisting feral and raw. "Spreading filth and violence and—"

"Stop!" I yelled over him, startling the fawn. She bolted, scampering back into the dark. He panted, eyes blazing, but clamped his mouth shut. "I understand. I do. You had a selfish moment. You regret it. We all have them." I fished the bullet out of my pocket, never not there anymore, constantly tapping at my thighs. I held it up, a white flag SOS bridge across the improbable, impossible canyon between us. "Sometimes we make selfish decisions for ourselves that we regret."

"It's not the same," he grumbled. "You didn't stop to take a photograph of your dying mother."

I arched an eyebrow at him, willing my face straight, tears back. Pushing away my mother and that last awful moment and what I really wanted to say to him in retort. I was halfway through his minefield, but I still had so far to go. I couldn't afford to falter now.

He huffed a sardonic laugh.

"You _have_ taken a photo. Since then."

Edward glanced at me then, finally. He shook his head, and I nodded back at him, trying my best not to let the insistent tug of a smile win out over my willpower. "A beautiful photo."

He took the stack from me and looked hard at the first one, me in that dress in that field with that deer and those flowers strung through my hair like I was playing dress up instead of just living my rotten, lonely life. Suddenly, I wasn't some girl with some problems and some mother and some house, somewhere in middle America. I was a soul or a spirit, something ethereal pinching the fabric of magic together against the boring human world, clothed in flowers and lace, clutching my fawn.

I didn't look real at all.

"This is—" he choked.

"That's me. Taken by you."

He swallowed, flipping to the next shot, the next, through the ones of me and into the succession of shots he'd taken of my palm, the fractions of my face. The shaking in his hands steadied with each shuffle of paper, a whisper of images brushing up against each other. It was the other aspect of the digital I didn't like. Unless we started spending money on computers and printers instead of chemical baths, they were stuck in there. No more stacks of photos on the kitchen table, no more piles around the mattress, no more collages on the living room floor.

"About the digital..." I said.

"That goddamned camera," he muttered, still shuffling.

"The thing is—I don't like it. I know it's better in some ways, probably in a lot of ways I don't even understand yet, and I know I can delete shots that don't go right to save room, but…" I trailed off, trying to gather up my quickly scattering thoughts. I took a deep breath and tried again. "I like film. Developing. The darkroom. And I like the messed up shots—I don't want to just delete them. Sometimes, I like them more than the good ones."

Edward's face didn't move at all for ten seconds, his eye boring deep down into me before I saw it start. The edge of his mouth, first one side and then the other, slowly picking up into a smile—his eye flaming back to life in a slow-blown dance of embers and wind, sparking brighter and brighter until he threw his head back and laughed.

"That," he chuckled, pointing at me, "that right there is precisely what I love about you."

I dipped my chin to my chest, so he couldn't see my face. My smile. It was a slip, one everyone made, a word plopped in there that didn't mean anything more than easy familiarity. The thing blooming in my chest wasn't necessarily sprouting in his, even though visions of ghost flowers blossomed in my eyes every time I saw him look at me.

Edward dropped the photos in a whisper against wood and reached for me, pulling me into his lap with a shaky exhale in his chest and his bourbon tongue trailing a string of nonsense against my skin. Kisses punctuating his words up my throat.

"You look at things all backwards, completely upside down, and you think it's wonderful… but everyone else is around the front thinking the same thing. And it's obvious—you're right."

"You're making no sense…. "

A slow, lazy ellipsis of his teeth to my lips, one-two-three.

"It's in your landscapes. That's where I see you best. Because you're never doing it like everyone else, the pretty shit. With you, there's always that crooked tree or the old rotten house or the busted fence line, and I keep thinking it's not going to work… but then you surprise the shit outta me."

Commas licking my earlobes, apostrophes littered along my hairline.

"You're always surprising me," he whispered.

Period. Dot. Fini.

I was so done for over him, I could hardly stand myself. I folded against him, over him, getting splinters in my knees, but I didn't care. Rubbing shameless and loose all over him, but I didn't care. Moaning his name into his mouth and I really didn't care because that earned me a grunt and a thrust and a pull from his fingers that told me he didn't care anymore either.

Stepping over the final roll of wire, around the final buried explosive, and taking him by the hand.

"Film only, from now on," I hummed, touching everything I could reach. Breathing too hard and too fast because my chest was aching and my limbs were trembling.

"Honestly, I couldn't care less if I never saw that camera again."

I nodded. I knew that feeling. "Yeah, well, I know of a safe place. If you want to bury the camera, I'll do it with you." I didn't want to imply that I believed the camera was tainted, like there was a ghost stuck in it, but that's exactly what it felt like.

He stopped kissing me. Pulled back to look at me with his eyebrow arching. "Do I wanna know what that means?"

"The gun. It's buried under your flagpole."

Edward's gaze drifted across the yard, a squint through the dark, and he shook his head as he spoke.

"That's a stupid place for something like that. Bound to be dug up someday."

"Why do you think I couldn't leave you alone at first?"

"Had you nervous, huh?" He grinned at me.

"About a lot of things," I admitted. "I never expected any of this."

He rubbed his hands up and down my thighs, going thoughtful and silent for a moment, before peering at me through the porch light.

"I'm sorry about earlier. In the kitchen. I'm sorry you had to see that side of me."

"I'm not."

It was the second time, in less than two months, someone had missed me. Whether it was intentional or not, that made two times something had come cutting a path toward me that could have left me dead. It was the feeling that was different, the fear from the bullet completely absent in the face of the knife.

I'd known she would do it if she could, but I knew, with even deeper certainty, that he wouldn't.

"I've told you already—you don't scare me."

"Even when I throw knives? You _should_ be scared."

"Not of you. You're my favorite… my pictures of you are my favorite."

"There you go again, finding beauty in the grotesque. In the mistakes. You keep doing that."

"I like mistakes, remember?" I whispered, my voice too wobbly to speak out loud. "And you." I ran my fingers across the black cap of the patch, down the strap, over the shell of his ear. "Tell me about this."

"Shrapnel. Damaged my cornea." His other eye fluttered closed, his head tilting back, as I tucked a single finger beneath the strap

"Are you blind?"

He shook his head. "No, but there are scars."

"Do you have to wear it forever?"

His gaze dropped to my neck, his fingers digging tight into my thighs as though he was holding onto something solid. "I could have taken it off weeks ago."

I didn't ask him why—I knew why. I knew that fear is what kept him there, the terror of ripping a Band-Aid off. It wasn't the wound that would hurt. It was everything around it, all the padding and protection suddenly gone. It was the exposure to air, water, and sunlight, and the sharp, rough edges of life that would hurt.

I kissed him again—my hand on his neck, the thrum of his pulse in my palm—his breath in my mouth, between my teeth, and under my tongue. Pulling away because this felt like falling out of a twenty-story building. Like falling out of an airplane. Like falling off the face of the moon. The thrilling fear of looking at someone and knowing that you'd risk splattering yourself wide open for them.

"Let me do it," I whispered. "Let me take it off."

He stiffened, face going rigid for a moment, before he nodded. I kept my eyes on his as I slipped my fingers into the strap of his eyepatch and slowly pulled it down his face.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	32. Chapter 32

_**~ For Judy ~**_

* * *

 **Chapter 32**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

She slipped her fingers under the strap, and my stomach rolled. My hands itched to push her away, to not take this last thing from me because I didn't think I could experience any more emotions tonight.

But part of me knew that if she didn't do it, no one ever would.

She was gentle when she placed her hand over my bandage as the leather slipped down my face, easing me into the shock of change. It lay around my neck like a noose as she kissed me, her hand never moving. Once, twice, three times.

Her eyes skipped between my seeing eye and the white gauze, but she committed to watching me as she slowly picked at the corner of tape across my eyebrow. "Does it hurt ever?"

"No." Admitting that made me feel stupid. Like a baby with a security blanket.

"How did it happen?" She moved to the other corner of tape, also peeling that off with great care.

"Punishment for what I'd done." I swallowed, remembering the moment the sharp bite of the shrapnel grazed me. "As soon as I pulled the camera from my eye, I was hit. Another reason why I should've forgotten the picture and gone to Emmett. I wouldn't have been in that spot, wouldn't have had that piece of bullet bounce off something and get me like a snake." I laughed bitterly. "But I suppose I deserved it so…."

"I'm going to rip this off quickly if you don't stop."

"You sound like my sister-in-law, Rose." I smiled. "You'd like her. She wouldn't put up with my pity party either."

"She sounds smart. Are you close?"

"Yes," I said automatically. "She helped me a lot when I got home. Even though she had just lost the love of her life, she straightened me out. I moved here to be closer, in case she ever needed me. She's not happy I still have this on." I motioned towards my eye.

"I think you needed it for a while. Gave you excuses. You don't need them anymore."

I felt the gauze start to lift and took a shaky breath. I had the gauze off before, to clean the wound initially, and when the doctor checked me out at the follow-up appointment. He told me and Rose it could come off in two weeks. The instruction I ignored.

But I'd not once opened my eye with the gauze off since then. "I'm nervous. What if I… what if I've damaged it from keeping it covered?" It's a fear I hadn't really voiced, never thinking I'd remove it to find out.

Her left hand cupped my face as the other pulled gently. "Just look at me; don't look at the porch light. Keep your eyes on me."

"There's nothing I would want to see first but you."

Like she did with the eyepatch, she covered my eye once the gauze was removed while she continued to stroke my cheek, my hair, the back of my neck. "You ready?" she whispered, as if she spoke too loudly, I'd run. Like I was a skittish deer.

"No." But I smiled anyway.

"Open your eye." I did as she said and saw blackness, her palm covering me. One finger at a time, she gently lifted her fingers as black turned to dull gray, turning to burnt orange then bright yellow. I squinted at the glow of the light reflecting off her face. Blinking a few times, I felt my eye tear from the dryness of the night air it hadn't felt in months.

"Everything is kind of blurry."

"I'm sure it'll take time."

I kept blinking, the light losing its stark brightness each time. The sensation reminded me of what my eye would do when it was pressed closed for long periods of time as I shot with my other eye. There'd be small bursts of afterglow surrounding every object for a few seconds after. The familiar feeling gave me a bit of comfort because I knew, from years of experience, that it would go away.

Bella stayed quiet, just perched on my lap with her hands on my shoulders as I began to look around the dark night. The bottle swam in focus, in and out, finally settling on being almost completely synced. The shed was a little harder to focus on, but there it was, becoming whole as my eye worked itself out.

Her finger lifted to touch my eyebrow, tracing the scar I knew was there that cut a path straight through the middle. "Sexy," she said, a hint of amusement in her voice. When I turned my attention to her and saw her fully for the first time in perfect focus, she was more beautiful through two eyes than she ever was with one.

"You are so fucking beautiful."

"So are you. But you were with the patch, too."

"I'll put it on again for you someday." I smirked.

"No, don't hide again." Her fingers continued to stroke my face while I just looked at her, trying to come to terms with everything I was feeling—the roller coaster I'd been through tonight with blood memories I'd had to re-live.

No. _Chosen_ to re-live because I felt safe with her.

My fingers trailed up her neck into her hair, and she gasped when I tightened my hold, making her head tilt a bit with the tension. Our eyes locked, and I could see nothing but desire and heat looking back at me. She truly wasn't afraid of me, of what I'd told her. I felt raw, forced open like an oyster and displayed wet and ripe in front of her. I was desperate for her, aching to be inside her body, and feel her wrapped around me. I needed to hear her moan under me and because of me, and I needed to lose myself in everything she was.

"I don't want to be gentle. Not tonight."

She tilted her own head further, her hair pulling more within my grasp. "So, don't be." It was all I needed, and my mouth clamped onto the soft skin of her neck and sucked, drawing the skin between my teeth and lips like a savage. Her sharp intake of breath and her hands sliding around my back to keep me there was all the encouragement I needed.

So I marked her, red and purple and mine.

Her hands slipped beneath my t-shirt, and she scratched at my back, her fingernails digging in and marking me much the same. It felt hungry and aching, and I knew her desire to release the demons that had invaded our private bubble, our utopian fields filled with wildflowers, photos, and deer, matched mine in its urgency.

I pulled her hair tighter, my mouth moving up her chin until my lips caught hers, messy and insistent. I was rewarded with a moan deep in her throat and a grind of her hips against my stiffening cock.

My eyes opened, and she swam into focus as I pulled away. Her lips were swollen, her breath coming in short pants, and I nearly came when her tongue came out of her mouth and traced her lips where mine had just assaulted them.

My hand moved from her hair and trailed its way down her neck, pressing slightly at the bruise I'd left before travelling into the open neck of her loose dress. My fingers played across her collarbone and the silky skin of her chest, drifting slowly, until they reached her very naked breast. Her nipple was hard and ready to be pinched, pulled, tormented.

My palm engulfed her, squeezing gently as she pressed herself against my hand and tightened her grip on my back. Her eyes opened then, lustful and needy, egging me on and urging me to take her. My other hand slipped inside the neckline to cover her as well, both of them working together to match the rhythm her hips had taken. I teased her with my thumbs, circling and pulling as she let her head fall back a bit, moaning as her tongue flashed out to lick her lips again.

She had no idea what she did to me, how her little gestures and movements affected me. I was an animal, hard as a rock, and she took advantage as she snaked her arms around my neck and forcefully rubbed herself against me. Her hand found its way down between us, and I clenched my jaw as she started to unbutton me. "I want you to use me; make me yours," she said as her thumb ran over the tip of my cock. "Release it all; take it out on me. I'm not delicate. I won't break." With that, she opened the fly of my jeans and plunged her hand inside, wrapping herself around me fully.

Her dress was hitching up on both sides of her thighs as she handled me while continuing to grind her hips, and I longed to grab her and shove myself inside. With one small slide off of her breasts, I grasped the material of her neckline and pulled, the satisfying rip of the flimsy fabric exactly what I had been counting on.

She stopped moving, and her eyes widened, but she couldn't hide the heat within them, staring at me before deliberately letting her shoulders shrug off the scraps that remained.

She was a siren, naked in the glow of the yellow porch light, her neck red and raw, her lips open and waiting, her breasts perfect and heaving as she breathed and continued to rub me.

There was no way I was going to be able to wait to slip inside her until I got us upstairs.

Pulling and ripping her underwear with one hand, I grabbed myself with the other, feeling her hand still tight around me as we stroked together. With one quick motion, she lifted and rubbed herself against me, guiding me in, while I gripped her shoulders and pulled her down onto me, her warm pussy squeezing down my cock until we were flush together, skin to skin, sweat to sweat.

Neither of us moved. Her breath was hot on my cheek as I buried my face in her neck. This wasn't the time to say, "I love you," but fuck if I didn't feel it straight down to my toes and want to scream it while my cock was buried deep inside her.

She was the one to take over, her knees lifting her up and down and slow in circles. I pulled myself away from her sweet neck, licking where I bruised her, and took her hips in my hands. "More," she whispered, cat-like. "More. All of it."

My eyes felt heavy, loaded with need, and ready to shut I was so close to exploding inside her, but I kept them on her. Two eyes matched mine, and I gave her everything she asked for.

I didn't dare look away as I guided her forcefully on top of me like she was weightless. Her moans escalated, her breathing stuttered, but she kept up with me. Neither of us looked away as I fucked her right there on the porch steps that creaked under us as she met me push for push, pull for pull.

I moved my thumb to where we were joined and pressed against her, the added friction making us both groan in pleasure. "Fuck," Bella said, dipping her forehead to mine. Hearing that mouth on her nearly did me in, but I wasn't ready to let her go yet. I wanted to look down so badly, to see where we connected, to watch myself slipping in and out of her, but I couldn't pull myself away and waste watching her come with my newly restored vision.

I rubbed her as she took it upon herself to lift higher, slam down harder. I worried about her knees, but she didn't seem to care as she fucked me right back. She was beautiful, sexy as hell, her chest getting damp despite the chill in the air. I broke away and swept down to lick her clavicle quickly, wanting to taste the salt and musk and savor what she was when I was deep inside her. I looked back up just in time to see her eyes begin to close. Her thighs tightened around me, so I rubbed harder, fighting back my own orgasm with a clenched jaw, my other hand turning to a fist on her hip.

Her fingers locked behind my neck, and she moaned my name, the sweetest sound I'd ever heard.

She looked so fucking beautiful as she came on me, rocking erratically, hair damp on her head as she held her breath, and my name fell off her lips with one last flex of her hips. It was only a few seconds until I lost it myself and exploded inside her, my eyes finally closing at the magnitude of my orgasm, the culmination of the exhausting, exhilarating night.

There was no doubt in my mind that she was mine.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	33. Chapter 33

**Yup, Edward again... he's got a lot to say**

* * *

 **Chapter 33**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

It had been a week or so since the eyepatch was removed, my eye still sensitive when I first woke up and when I got tired.

It had also been a week since I'd removed the patch from the hole where I kept my demons and laid them out at Bella's feet, asking her to understand.

And amazingly, like the person she was, she did. It felt like a fifty pound block of crumbling concrete had been lifted from my chest, allowing me to breathe again. My personal crater of hell had begun to be sewn up.

We'd settled back into a routine. She'd get up early and take the camera somewhere, always using my first one—she hadn't touched the digital again—while I finished the side of my multi-colored house. I had decided I wasn't going to do the whole thing in the colorful stripes, but had thought I'd do the back of the house at least, so when Bella looked out, she'd smile.

But that had grown into an odd thought over the last few days because she hadn't left my bed even one night. I could no longer picture Bella loping across the field to come see me because in my new, nightmare-free dreams and resurrected reality, she was always already there. In my kitchen, in my clawfoot bathtub, stashing things in the corner of my bedroom like she thought I didn't notice. Hell, maybe she didn't even realize she was doing it.

Mostly her books had been making their way over, but there were a few other items mixed in. A choker necklace that looked really old, a hand-carved box that could've been ivory, and a few random pieces of clothing. Her toothbrush sat next to mine in the bathroom in the built-in ceramic holder, and her hairbrush lived inside the rusted medicine chest.

I still didn't really have anything I owned, except for what was up in the attic, so having her things scattered throughout the house made me feel less alone— something I hadn't realized I'd felt the whole time I'd put my career first and moved from city to city, hotel to hotel, disaster to disaster.

Her photos were popping up here and there too. I didn't know if she hung them for me, or if she wanted to display them, but I knew that depressing house across our field wasn't the place to stage them. Like she felt that it wasn't her home anymore, much like I did. I'd smile when I'd find them because they were almost as beautiful as she was. She reminded me that pictures could be happy and have no agenda, and I found that I'd look around the house each evening, following her afternoons in the darkroom, to see if there were any more hidden pictures.

I loved watching her work in there, after I'd be done painting or fixing a few things that needed attention around the house. A railing here, a birdhouse there.

But Bella's stood there across the way, all but forgotten. I hadn't fixed another thing over there since she'd had that fit—what I could only describe as a meltdown—and I brought her back to my place, where it felt like she belonged.

Taking a break from painting the last section of trim, I drank straight out of the pitcher of lemonade she'd made me and toed my way inside her darkroom. It might've been my shed, but this was all hers. Dozens of photographs were pinned up along the walls, some still on the line drying. Extra reserves of chemicals were piled up in the corners, the latest shipment of film canisters lined up neatly on the shelf. She'd strung some of those fairy lights from her bedroom across the roofline, and she'd have them on when the red light wasn't needed.

Lemonade splashed on my bare chest when I heard a car door slam behind me. Thinking it was Sam coming to join me for a beer, which had become habit when he dropped off supplies, my two eyes popped clear out of their sockets when I saw Rose walking up the gravel drive carrying two boxes.

She looked good. Her face was bright and smiling, and her hair was freshly cut to just above her shoulders. She had makeup on, her clothes weren't hanging off her anymore, and as she approached, she walked with a bounce in her step.

She looked happy.

She lowered the boxes and embraced me enthusiastically, her arms wrapping around my neck as I instinctively gathered her into a hug. She smelled familiar, and I closed my eyes, pushing my face in her hair and thought of Emmett, about how he always buried himself in her neck and kissed her loudly, no matter where they were.

"What are you doing here?"

"What, you're not happy to see me?"

"Of course I am." And I truly was. So much had happened since our last phone call, and it was all her doing. "I'm thrilled."

"You're also very sweaty." She laughed and wiped her hands on her jeans.

"I've been working on the house." With that, she turned and shielded her eyes from the sun as it peaked over the roofline.

"I thought you were painting it?"

"I am—come on." I smiled and grabbed her hand, excited to show her what I'd done. Walking around the porch, she laughed when the side came into view.

"Well, that's different." Her hands went to her hips, and I caught a flash of her diamond ring, still in place, and felt a familiar wave of nausea roll through me.

Turning to the house, I swallowed it down. "Um, yeah. I'm not quite sure why it happened… but it happened."

"I love it."

I beamed at her. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I'd do the whole thing."

We stood for a bit looking at the circus tent I'd created until I led her back to the porch, both of us sitting on the creaky steps. "Why are you here? Is everything okay?"

"I can't come see how my brother-in-law is doing?"

It warmed me to know she still considered me that. "Don't get me wrong—you're always welcome, but it's a two hour drive."

She nodded towards the forgotten boxes on the driveway. "Thought those might be important."

"Probably not—anything I order comes through the post office in town. You could've shipped them."

"I _am_ starting to think you aren't welcoming this visit." She smiled and bumped her knee against mine.

"I'm actually really glad you're here. I've missed you."

Her hand covered mine on the step. "That makes me happy. There was a time that being with me was a chore."

"Not a chore. It was torture." I shook my head and swallowed. "But you knew that."

"I knew that." Her hand slipped from mine, and her fingers rolled her rings around blindly. "The night you got drunk, trashed my apartment, and I left—you know where I went?"

Guilt filled me, remembering it clearly. After the funeral was done, I'd been a one-man pity party, drinking for days and lashing out at Rose because she was the nearest thing I had to Emmett. I took it all out on her, my anger and my pain, simply because if I treated her badly, she wouldn't have the chance to do it to me for taking the love of her life away. "I assumed your parents' house."

"I went to the quarry Emmett used to shoot fireworks at. Remember that place?"

"I do."

"It was such a dark night, no moon. The headlights from my car shined over the rocks and the deep valley. I stood on the edge and kicked pebbles down into the bottom of the basin, waiting to see how long the muted splash from the water below would take to reach me."

My blood ran icy. "Rose, you weren't—"

"No, I wasn't going to jump. I'm not going to say I didn't think about it. Instead, I screamed and yelled, puked my guts up from the sheer violence of it all. I never told you this because I knew you wouldn't be able to handle it, but part of me was glad you were such a fucking mess."

I barked a laugh. "That's real nice."

"If you were a mess, I had something to focus on besides how mad at you I was." She fell silent, her eyes gazing out over the fields. "Because I _was_ mad at you, Edward. Not how you think." She cut me off when I opened my mouth to speak. "I wasn't mad that you'd killed Emmett, or let him die, or whatever it was you were blaming yourself for. I was mad at you because you were with him when he died, and I wasn't."

"You wouldn't have wanted to be there, Rose."

"To say goodbye to him? To kiss him one last time? I'd have been right there, in the middle of it all, for one last chance." I covered my eyes with my hand and pressed hard. "I'm so fucking thankful you were there, Edward. If it couldn't be me, you were the next best thing. Thank you for being there with him."

Tears started to run down my face, and I felt Rose scooch over and press herself into my side. Her arm came around my back and clinched at my waist; her head laid on my shoulder as mine dipped and bowed. We sat there in our thoughts, our tears, and our memories until it was me who straightened up and inhaled, catching my breath.

Our eyes locked, and we stared silently at one another, forgiving and letting go. I was filled with an elation I couldn't fathom, happy that she'd told me what was really going on in her head through that time instead of counseling me as she'd always done.

It was the last piece I needed.

"Hey, your eyepatch—" She pointed at my face, and I reached a hand up instinctively.

"Oh, yeah."

"And you're okay?"

"Feels a bit weak at times, but yeah. It's fine. It came off the night we last spoke, actually."

"I'm glad you followed my advice. As usual, I was right." She smirked.

"You're always right." I rolled my eyes. "You were right about Bella, too."

"Do tell." She rested her chin on her hand and turned her body to face me.

"I told her everything. It was hard, but you were right. She made up her own mind I wasn't a monster."

"And you two…"

I smiled. "Happy. We're both really happy. That's her house." I pointed across the field. "But she lives here." The deer suddenly came from around the shed. "That thing, too, over by the darkroom. It's her pet."

"Her pet," Rose deadpanned. "That's the deer you mentioned."

"Yeah. Thing still doesn't have a name."

"So you live with a girl and a deer. That's quite the jump in adulthood."

"It feels right somehow. I don't know."

She sighed. "Edward, the reason I'm here—I have something to tell you. I'm moving."

My ears pounded like her words had struck me with closed fists. "Moving? Where? Why?"

"I can't stay here. In that apartment. I'm going to move closer to my sister in San Francisco. Be with my nieces."

Panic closed in, but I got it. If anyone understood running away, it was me. "What am I going to do without you here?"

"Edward, you're doing fine. We'll talk all the time, and you'll visit me."

I nodded and thought about showing Bella a city like that.

"I actually should go if I want to hit Wyoming by nightfall, but don't think I missed you saying 'darkroom'!" She jumped up on her feet. "Show me!" She walked towards the shed, and I had no choice but to follow. I wondered what she'd think of it and quickly explained.

"That's Bella's. She's been using my old cameras. She's really quite good. I built this for her, you know, so she could learn how it's really done." I rambled as Rose walked around the space, looking at the photos and the equipment.

She looked closer at one of the photos of me, sitting on the edge of the creek with the deer's head in my lap. Black and white and she'd captured a hint of fogginess from the water, making it ethereal. "I like these."

"She's a natural."

"And you?" She waved her hand around.

"No, I told you—I'm done."

"You built HER a darkroom. Yeah, right."

I shrugged, the idea of it maybe held a shred of truth. "When you're ready to get back into it, call me. I'm still up for the manager position." She winked.

I shook my head but smiled back.

She grabbed me then and hugged me twice as hard as she did when she arrived. I held her close, and we said nothing, just stayed like that until she pulled away.

"Be careful driving. Check in, will you?" I meant it more than just on the road. Goodbyes to me had always been final in my life. People came and went, and I had a sick feeling in my stomach. But I reminded myself that this was Rose, Emmett's Rose, and we'd always have him to tie us together.

"You take care of yourself, Edward. And your menagerie. I'm sorry I didn't get to meet her."

"You will."

"I will." She walked to the car and put one foot inside, smiling at me for a moment before sitting. I watched her back out of the driveway and turn into the road until she was nothing but the dust she'd kicked up.

Bella was running up the driveway, disrupting that cloud and making her own. I smiled, thinking she was anxious to show me what she'd done today. When she plowed into me, clinging for dear life, and began kissing me, her grasp was frantic, not loving, not eager. She was demanding, clawing at my belt buckle, and it felt all off. I pulled away, grabbed her hands and looked at her face.

There wasn't passion there.

"Bella, what's going on?"

It was sheer terror.

"What happened?"

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	34. Chapter 34

**Chapter 34**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

I was crouched behind the grocery store, beside a dumpster, waiting for Mrs. Ashbury to walk by when he caught me.

I'd been doing this a lot lately, sneaking off to town while Edward painted his house. He seemed to work better alone, always lost so deep in his head. I wasn't much different, perfectly content to lose myself in the quiet solitude of his cameras. Pressing lenses up against the clover, through the grass, into the trees, fiddling until my exposures caught hidden gems of life: pinprick flowers and tiny insects, herds of cattle, that big gaping skyline—everything a reminder that the wide open prairie wasn't as dead as it felt. The silent whisper wasn't so quiet anymore and the ground not so unyielding—the sun dampening from painful burn to unpleasant warmth—and I felt like I was finally stepping free from a long and frigid bout of winter.

I'd hung a snapshot on the refrigerator that I'd taken of Edward high up on his ladder, shirtless in the sunshine and framed by the peaked eaves. Another one, tucked into the bathroom mirror, of a midsummer violet, its sprawling field of companions blurred into a purple haze behind it. A shot of the sunset, the sky blazing, and our two houses squatting, shadowed and dark, as if squaring off for a fight in the hallway where Millie's photos used to hang. Edward materializing through the gloom as he walked toward the camera, taped to the wallpaper right there by the anniversary photo in the living room.

Papering his home in better memories than the ones hidden in his attic.

Life, as seen through a camera lens.

A cop car rolled up right in front of me.

Jacob rolled his window down, squinting at me in confusion. "What in the hell are you doin'?" He eyed me suspiciously, and I stood, shuffling my feet. I knew what this looked like, but I'd come to find that stealth was my best tool if I wanted to capture people the way I saw them. Outside the box of awareness, in their natural environment, unassuming and completely fucking bonkers as usual.

Case in point: Mrs. Ashbury wore polyester pantsuits, bought hairspray in bulk, and hauled her small, yappy dog around in a baby carrier strapped to her chest.

"Taking photos."

"Of what?"

I shrugged. He shook his head, eyes falling to the camera hanging around my neck. The Leica MP. Beautiful black and polished silver, I liked the weight of it best out of that entire box of cameras. I liked the purr it made as it wound film and the audible click of the shutter. I liked the photos it took, something about the colors and the way the light stood still for this camera.

"Where'd you get that?"

"My neighbor."

I steeled my face, but right there under the surface was the thrill I still got when I thought about slipping that eyepatch off. When he rolled over in the morning and blinked at me and smiled that smile of his. Kissing his eyelids and letting him undress me with one momentary look. My heart was jumping up and down right beneath my skin, glowing something that felt like lust and adoration, all head over heels.

It showed, and I knew it.

"Your neighbor, huh? You steal it?" Jacob cracked a grin at me, the boy in him sparking to life for a fleeting moment. We both knew that, between us, he'd been the childhood thief.

"Fuck you, Jake," I laughed, "he gave it to me."

"Heard he's been helping you out."

I glared at him. "Imagine that. Wonder who told you. My leg still isn't amputated, either."

"Glad someone's doing something," he scoffed. "I worry about you a fair bit, way out there, all alone."

I wanted to blurt out that I wasn't actually alone at all, between the fawn and Edward, I was never alone. "I'm tough," I said, even though I really didn't feel tough at all.

"You can be tough as you want, chick, but I see you." He finally took off those sunglasses, and we were both back there, like something in the fabric of time had pinched together, launching us from an alleyway to a hallway, all carpet and blood and death rites. My stunted explanations and his advice to play stupid: an accident—you didn't see it; you found her; you know nothing. I clutched my arms around myself, trying to keep everything contained.

"I think I'm in shock."

"I think you have PTSD, but that's just me." Jacob fisted the steering wheel, huffing heavily. "Listen, Bells." He motioned me closer, lowering his voice, and my jumpy heart ratcheted up a few hundred knocks per second as he continued. "They're coming back to the house. They want to find the gun."

That bullet was a burning supernova in my pocket.

"You told me you'd hold them off."

Jacob clicked his tongue, sounding unhappy. "I'm not saying you have the gun, Bells, but if you do—you'd better get rid of it."

"It's gone," I exhaled.

"Good." He nodded squinting down the building toward the parking lot. "They can't do much without a weapon, but they'll tear apart the house to find it, Bells."

* * *

I flew home.

The shortcut through old Roy Eppich's field was the scenic route, all flox and black-eyed Susans, but I didn't see any of it. Couldn't feel anything. The camera bounced against me as I hurtled through the flowers, my breath lost somewhere far behind me.

They were coming. And I had no explanation. None. Gun, buried. Bullet, pocketed. Her room in ruins from my hissy fit. Belongings scattered in the grass. The tattered shambles that made up the rest of the house. Everything teetering on the verge of collapse and me right there in the middle of the rubble.

Edward was almost done—the paint job he'd begun weeks ago close to completion and so bright, shiny, and new in the sunshine. The house looked so happy after being sad for so long. He was standing in the driveway inspecting his work as I ran up, his warpaint and his sunburns and his grin hanging sideways at my flushed face and my tangled hair and my wild eyes. He probably thought I was excited about some shot I had taken when the reality of me was so much worse, and I hadn't even taken a single photo all day.

I barreled into him, clambering up into his arms and putting my mouth anywhere I could reach, kissing him instead of screaming out loud. I clutched him closer, dragging my nails across his shoulders, my teeth in his neck, my thorns hooking him close enough to bleed. Close enough to crawl inside of him.

I worked out of his grip, my vision starting to wobble, head gone light and heart so, so heavy, I could feel it throbbing in the soles of my feet. I fumbled with his belt buckle, numb fingers because I couldn't breathe to save myself. Numb mouth because I'd put everything I had into not screaming the whole run home. Numb brain because there was way too much going on inside of me to even begin to sort out the tangled mess.

Edward grabbed my hands and took one step back, with his belt flopping undone between us.

"What's going on?" He glared at me, asking again—too smart, too aware, too used to evasive tactics to allow me to slip anything by him. I ignored him, closing the gap between us in a full body rub, like maybe I could sandpaper hard enough to smooth us both back out. He gripped my wrists and pinned me like a butterfly, dagger eyes and snake fangs. "Bella. What happened?"

"I just need to not think for a while," I hedged, squirming in his grip. Avoiding his gaze. Burning up from the inside. Desperate for a distraction, any distraction, him especially, and give it to me now.

Turn me off, on, up, down—I didn't know—just do something to me.

I lunged for him.

"I'm not your fucking play toy," he barked, flinging me away. I stumbled, but he caught me by the elbow before I fell, right back where'd he'd been before I even had a chance to feel hurt by it. He snatched me up close enough to breathe on my face. "Don't shut down on me. Not now."

I could hear him in my head, breathe breathe breathe, and I took a giant, shaking ribcage full of air.

"What. Happened." He said it again, clipped and demanding.

"They're coming to the house," I stammered. "They want the gun."

Edward's brows pinched. "Who is? The cops?"

I nodded, my eyes brimming an entire salty ocean, throat closing up, and everything was shaking. My legs, my head, my anxious, skittering heart. His eyes zipped straight to the flagpole, his mouth set in a hard line. He studied it for a long time before looking back to me.

"How do you even still have that thing? Didn't they ask for it… before?" He faltered, looking conflicted about his question, needing to know so much more to even begin to understand my fear.

"They looked. But it got lodged under the fridge. It took me six days to find it, the day before the storm… the day before—" I gulped, staring up at him. "The day before you came."

Edward's eyes widened. "It's only been that long? All of that?" He gestured toward the peaked roofline of my house, encompassing so much in that sweep of his hand. I nodded, feeling something start to wrench down the middle of my breastbone, an ache that left me breathless.

"Oh, Bella." He sighed my name, hands around my shoulders, pulling me close, and I let him hold me upright.

"Best thing to do about it is dig it up. Wipe it. Hide it somewhere they'll be bound to find it. Put an end to it all."

"We can't just do that." My words clattered through me, wheels undone from their tracks, and my heart so high up in my throat I could taste it. "It's not that simple."

"Why not? They come; they find it; they go."

"If they want the gun, they're going to want the bullet." I pulled the shiny metal from my pocket, always oddly cool to the touch. "And if they have those things, they're going to want me."

His face went blank.

He stared at me, hard.

Something in his face had changed as though his bones had softened, or some of his demons had finally clawed themselves free, now that the patch was gone. I couldn't help looking left. I'd seen so much of his right, but his left eye… it looked deeper, bottomless—struck through with a shade of blue I hadn't found in his other eye, not even after all of this time. He was working it out, there behind the blue, and I could see the moment the truth hit him. Such a small detail for such monstrous, terrifying consequences.

"She didn't—"

"No."

He swallowed. "You."

I nodded, closing my eyes, sure that I'd never be able to forget what it looks like to stare down the barrel of a gun. "I thought she was going to break my wrist when we fought. She shot at me, and I tried to get it away, but she fought me so hard I was sure she was going to win. I was sure whatever monster had taken up inside of her was finally going to win. She was going to break me somehow—my arm or my heart or my life. We fell over, and I got a grip on the gun. I meant to throw it, but I pulled the trigger instead."

I'd never be able to forget what it felt like to shoot. To force that gun into action. To pull the trigger.

"Sounds like an accident to me."

"Maybe, but not really."

"A wise person once told me that we do selfish things we regret. In this case, I'd say it was survival." He clutched my face, holding me between his palms. "If the choice was your life or hers, I'm glad you picked yourself."

* * *

One o'clock in the morning.

Edward and the fawn were curled up in bed, all gangly limbs and snoring. His hand rising and falling with the gentle push of her ribs. Her ears twitching in her dreams. Stolen covers and pilfered pillows.

There was no sleep left for me in that bed.

I was in the attic.

The moon was enormous, full to bursting and pressing its face down against the sky like it could kiss the prairie—everything burnished silver under its glow. The grass pooled and eddied in the nighttime breeze, a mercurial ocean with the crumpled boat of my home casting the only shadow. I stared at it for a long while through the window, wondering when everything had gone so sideways. How I'd been flung so far out to sea and had lasted so long swarmed by sharks. Looking at it now, from Edward's house, felt like climbing aboard a life raft.

I swear the house sunk a little further into to the grass.

The digital camera had been banished up here after I found Emmett. A box in the shadows—it gave me a chill just pulling it free, goosebumps up my arms. It was the only camera I'd want to take such a sad, haunted photo on anyway. Fitting that the ghost of my house lived forever with the ghost in that camera. The camo jacket was crumpled haphazardly beneath the digital, and I wrapped myself in the uncertain safety of it to snap my shot.

The efficient click of the shutter, the stillness—no gears or film to wind—set my teeth on edge.

There was a new box, one not yet covered in dust, and a fresh set of footprints leading to and away from it. The return address was from somewhere in New York, and it was marked with several urgent stickers, glaring red warnings that had gone unheeded.

I was beyond the point of feeling guilty about all of my snooping.

I pulled out a letter.

 _Dear Mr. Cullen,_

 _We are pleased to announce that you are the 2018 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography, an honor we give in the face of tremendous personal tragedy. Your compelling photo series, originally published in the New York Times, demonstrates a level of skill and bravery while documenting the unfolding crisis in the Middle East with unflinching realism. Each image is provocative, impeccably composed, and we commend your dedication to producing such memorable work under extreme hazard._

 _We intend to dedicate this year's award in the memory of your late brother. His sacrifice and your poignant portrayal of the realities of war faced by our service members, despite your personal connection, has touched the hearts and minds of many. Please join us in celebrating his life, as well as your career achievements, on October 13th, 2018._

 _Sincerely yours,_

 _Pulitzer Prize Board_

 _2018_

In the same envelope was a certificate, fancy embossed gold, and his name written in large, elegant script. An invitation to the ceremony dinner, a blank RSVP card, and an unmailed return envelope.

A check.

Uncashed.

Fifteen thousand dollars to his name.

He was famous. More so than I'd ever imagined. I knelt in the dust before one of those countless stacks of photographs, all of them leaning face-first into the walls as though they were holding up the roof. The digital sat in my lap, strap limp against my knees, as I inspected Edward's art, looking at them through a whole new lens.

A desert, caught up full bloom in a wash of golden flowers. A girl holding a pinwheel in the air as she ran pell-mell down a dirty, rubble-strewn street, a bit of bright barreling through a scene of recent devastation. Women sunbathing on bright towels, the pale soles of their feet and a harsh, jutting city scraping the sky behind them. A cat, thin and hungry, sitting in the windows of a long-forgotten building, the roof caved in, half-consumed by a ravenous jungle.

The up and down was almost too much. The beauty smashed between the wreckage, butterflies between bomb shelters, just enough of the good to keep me looking through the bad. Every photo sent a thrill through my heart, studying the way the light moved, the colors breathed, and the shots framed themselves—some of it unbelievable. The things he had done, the way he had done them, capturing the impossible moments of nature, the improbable moments of humanity...

I thought I knew how to coax a camera, how to make it sing, but Edward spoke a secret language only those tiny black boxes could hear. He could whisper promises into them, and they would lay themselves open in a way I doubted they would for anyone else. Some kind of magic embedded in his fingers, his eye. The digital hummed under my touch as though it agreed.

An elephant dusted in red clay. A boat upturned on top of a car. A tree-lined street, anywhere in the world. A man scowling into the face mask of riot-geared police officer. A glacier floating solemn and unhurried through a vast stretch of water.

And there was that blue. The one in his eye, matched shade for shade by a solid piece of ancient ice, the deepest indigo clutched in the center like a heartbeat.

He'd seen such wonderful things. Terrible sometimes, but wonderful still. His world growing bigger and bigger with every photograph, even as mine felt smaller and smaller. I couldn't for the life of me understand why he'd banished himself here. To the flatlands, the sorrowful Midwest.

To me.

I wrestled my hands down into the pockets of the jacket, freezing, and caught so deep in the blue of that glacier that nothing felt real. The left pocket clunked hard against my knuckle, and I fumbled my fingers around something cool to the touch.

The zippo.

Engraved with E.C. in fancy script.

I stood, the digital in the dust by my feet, and held it out at an arm's length, flipping it open and striking the wheel with my thumb. The little flame sputtered to life, dancing a bit before it settled tall and straight, brightening the rafters above me. I blinked, once, twice, the dark fading.

Edward had spent so long with only half of his vision, all of the work falling to his right eye. His good eye. I squinted my own, the attic around me warping to the left as my vision shifted. My faraway house sat hunched in the moonlight, framed by the attic window. I moved my hand until the little flame sat right over the porch.

The tiny flare doused the house in burning, clean light— a baptism of flame—wiped out in a kiss of heat.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	35. Chapter 35

**Chapter 35**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

Orange is an extraordinary color.

I'd often sought out the hue to photograph because of the way it translated onto the printed page. Vibrant, full of life and heat, passion and energy. It would give that pop to an image that was maybe stark otherwise.

The color is abundant in nature. A shade of it can be found in almost everything organic that graces this earth. Majestic sunrises and sunsets being the most obvious that comes to mind. It also shows its beauty in flowers, fruit, vegetables, dirt, insects, leaves. Human hair can be kissed by orange as can the soft fur of an animal.

But when the orange is angry, you feel its fury and hear its roar. It singes you and makes you yell. It frightens you, captures you, panics you until you're backed into a corner, huddled underneath a mountain of crumbling debris, waiting to die until Emmett pulls you out.

My heart was beating outside of my chest cavity, back in Afghanistan, huddled in that corner with me as I stared at the ceiling of what I was trying to convince myself was my plain, boring bedroom in Kansas. The air crackled and moved with the intensity as waves of orange flickered against the surface above me. I flinched as I heard boards falling and reached instinctively out to my left, searching for Bella in the glow.

My hand came up empty.

Sitting straight up, my thoughts cleared, and I realized the fire wasn't as close as I'd imagined, but it was here somewhere, licking itself onto my bedroom walls to tease me and torture me.

The deer was at the window, braying and clicking its hooves against the wood boards.

The shed. The darkroom. Bella.

I jumped up and ran to the open window, instantly squeezing my eyes shut at the brightness that assaulted my still-healing eye. The fire wasn't close, wasn't on my property, but it was in my field.

Bella's house was lit up like a bonfire. I could see the flames shooting up out the first floor window, engulfing the porch, and looking to feast itself upon the rest of the structure.

"Bella!" I called out the window. Nothing.

The deer followed me, tripping along the way as I ran down the steps, calling her name over and over again. I told myself she wouldn't go over there in the night to retrieve things to bring back here. She wouldn't go to light a candle to see and trip on that missing piece of rug. She wouldn't—

My bare feet touched the porch as I burst out the door, still calling her name, but I stopped short when I saw a small, dark shadow standing in front of the burning house. "Bella!" I yelled louder, hands cupping my mouth, shouting over the grass.

The figure moved, raising its hands high above its head, and that's when I knew.

She'd sent that sad old house to its death.

Running across the scratchy field, I pulled up behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her back with me. I could feel the intense heat from the fire, and her clothes were flame-warmed where I touched them as her hands came up and rested on my arms, her fingers digging into my skin to hold me there with her.

"Bella, what did you do." It was a statement, not a question. Her eyes were dancing in the light, her mouth in a tight line. There was soot on her cheek, bits of ash in her hair. My flak jacket was swimming on her, and my digital camera hung from her neck. Confusion riddled me, but I couldn't piece it all together.

"Good riddance," she said, just loud enough for me to hear. With a loud crack, the porch beam split and fell, sending embers up to catch parts not yet on fire. It was spreading fast. I pulled her further back, both of us stepping on the discarded items that lay dead in the field.

"Bella, we have to get away from here." My digital camera bumped into my wrist as I tried lifting her, but she squirmed out of my grasp and took two steps closer to the house. She stood eerily still, her hair swirling and twisting from the heat of the ever expanding flame.

"Bella, we have to _go_!" I went to pull her again just as she reached into the pocket of my jacket and held something between her fingers. My eyes squinted to see what it was against the brightness that stood in front of us, but I'd seen enough spent bullets to know exactly what it was.

"Is that—" She glared at me, the beauty of the orange and red lighting up the fury in her face, and I could do nothing but shut up. She rolled it back and forth but didn't answer before she threw it as hard as she could into the open flame coming out of the kitchen window.

"Fuck this house," she spit out before she bent down and grabbed something from the pile at our feet and threw that in too.

"Fuck my mother." Another blind toss into the flames.

"Fuck my sad, sorry life. Fuck this stupid town. Fuck the whole horrible world."

She became more furious with each item, circling the trash, throwing things to feed the fire. Some made it in and some fell short as she hurled and screamed. I could do nothing but watch and make sure she didn't get too close. Reason dictated that we should call the fire department, but I was frozen in place, watching her rid herself of demons she'd long suffered.

I wasn't going to take this away from her.

She stopped and stared down at something I couldn't see before slowly bending to pick it up. A broken and grotesque pale face stared back at her, one eye gone clear out of its head.

The baby doll.

"And fuck you most of all."

She threw that thing with such force, it knocked out the last remaining piece of clapboard hanging from the doorway. I swore the fire kicked up in the spot where the doll landed, burning brighter and hotter than any other part in this monstrous destruction.

Tears left streaks in the ever-growing layer of soot that covered her, but there was relief on her face. A peace I don't know I'd ever seen on her except maybe when she was developing her film. Like she'd read my mind, she grabbed the camera that hung from her neck and stared down at it. Her eyes lifted to mine, and a smile crossed her features. She took the camera from her neck and held it out to me like a dead cat by its tail.

I took it from her silently, the heft and weight of it bigger than the actual parts that made it. Bella's house held monsters. Monsters she was now burning into nothingness to release her from the ghostly arms of things that tried to hold her back.

Emmett in this camera was the arm that choked me every single minute of every single day.

With no other thought, I threw my camera straight into the flame, right on top of where that doll was burning stronger and faster than anything. Fire shot up red, yellow, and orange as a black plume of thick smoke rose to the ceiling before disappearing behind another curtain of the inferno.

I felt Bella's hand slip into mine, and we watched that house burn burn as all the things that had tortured and maimed us screamed and wailed.

Wailed and screamed. Not just the things. It was behind us now, getting louder. We looked at each other, and the blue of police lights lit up one side of her face as the orange danced on the other.

"I love you," I said, gripping her fingers tight. The blue got closer and more intense, the sirens deafening, and I couldn't hear her, but she said it back.

"I love you," she mouthed and gave me a small smile.

The cop car pulled up right behind us with a screech of its brakes.

The party was over.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	36. Chapter 36

**Chapter 36**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

Sheriff Pickens was tall and fat and half-bald. He was from somewhere else because his voice twanged wrong, and he'd been staring at me funny ever since he'd pulled up in the dirt behind the fire engine. I'd been a thorn in his side since he started here. The Swan girl with the crazy mom out there on the edge of the county line.

"Ms. Swan." He shook my hand too hard, and I flinched. In the corner of my vision, I saw Jacob's eyes narrow. I tucked my throbbing hand back into my lap and waited. I was sitting on the trunk of Jake's cruiser, wrapped in Edward's jacket. He was off somewhere helping to beat out trailing embers in the grass, my skeleton house smoldering its soul right up into the sky. I was sweating despite the early morning chill.

"You wanna tell me what happened here?" Pickens waved his hand toward the burning pile behind him, and I looked hard at him, thinking it was pretty self-explanatory.

"My house just burned down," I said flatly.

His eyebrow perked in irritation. "We can all see that, Ms. Swan. You're trying to tell me the house went up in flames? Poof. Just like that?" He flicked his fingers into the air like a spark bursting to life and then dying in his palm.

Jacob stepped forward, clearing his throat.

"I'd venture to say the thing should have burned down years ago, Marty. Been watching it fall over for decades now." He glanced apologetically at me, brief and slim, before looking back to his boss. "Wouldn't surprise me in the least."

"I second that." Jasper stepped up beside Jacob, the genetic bonds written all over their faces. Same nose. Same eyes. Same no nonsense, life-is-shit-just-get-over-it attitude. "Place was a shit hole." He didn't flash me the "I'm sorry" look his brother had because he wasn't sorry at all. Brutally honest Jasper, up against the empathy of his older brother.

I glared at him.

He shrugged. "Truth."

Pickens pointed a finger at Jacob with a scowl on his face. "You were supposed to get out here last week to find that gun, Black. I have half a mind to make you dig through that pile yourself, when this is all over." Jacob grimaced but Pickens didn't even notice, just carried on ranting. "You all want me to believe it was a pilot light? A fuse? Maybe someone knocked a candle over? Bullshit," he spat, eyeing us sardonically before turning on me. "Where were you? It certainly doesn't look like you jumped out your window, young lady. And don't tell me you made it out the front door—I know enough about fires to tell that's where it started."

I froze.

Everything in me turned to concrete, the air in my lungs and the blood in my veins and every rational thought running through my head. I scrambled for an answer, choking on my heartbeat. Just tell him you were in the fields. By the creek. With Sparrow. Tell him something. Anything. Tell him now.

"She was with me."

I heard him step close behind me, felt his hand on the base of my spine, and those words he spoke clanging through me. I knew a diving bell when I heard it. Jasper's eyes narrowed to slits, and Jake's eyebrows pulled up into his hair, and I held on tight to the feel of Edward touching me, lest my stupid, traitorous grin get the better of me.

* * *

The cops left at dawn. The firefighters after them. The volunteers who'd risen from bed to save me, and I felt a tinge of guilt as they shook my hand or outright hugged me. Neighbors who'd watched me grow up in this house. They left thinking about the poor Swan girl and her broken mom and her burnt-down house, when they were really leaving a living, breathing monster standing in the dirt of the driveway. 

An impostor, probably.

A murderer, likely.

A mess.

Completely.

The house was still smoking, a pile of wreckage more like an airplane crash than a life. I sat in the dirt of the driveway watching the smoke, hugging the fawn close, and letting the sun rise even though I could hardly stand it. Edward was still beating out embers with a shovel, far off, and shuffling through the grass.

I rubbed my wet face against the fawn, resting my cheek in her neck, and that's when I saw it.

A deer.

Not just a deer. A doe. Tall and lean, big ears twitching, standing stark still in the shadows of the trees down by the creek bottom. Still as stone, watching me.

Watching us.

My heart clambered loudly before stalling out all together.

The doe had a fawn with her. It took two steps toward us, into the sunlight, sniffing the air, its spots fading just as fast as the creature beneath my cheek. My fawn picked up her head, scrambling out of my arms as though bidden by some song I couldn't hear. Her ears flapped nervously as she paced slow and steady toward the oncoming fawn, her mirror twin approaching her just as cautiously. They met nose to nose, a silent moment of sniffing, and then a squeal as my Little Thunder dashed after the fawn. They ran two wide circles, chasing each other before arcing back toward the doe in the shadows.

Both fawns skidded to a halt in front of her, and if animals could see ghosts, this doe was staring at one now. Her ears were shaking, her shoulders, and her legs as though she was too scared to move or breathe, lest the vision of her missing baby be replaced by the cruel winds of prairie reality. It took her a full minute to step forward, one slow sniff behind the ears of my baby.

I watched, breaking inside, as she whickered something soft and licked the fawn on the forehead, the baby skittering beneath her legs and twisting through her knees the same way she'd always done to me. I stood, a cloud of dust at my feet, and watched the doe turn toward the trees, her fawn bounding after her.

My fawn took an errant step to follow them but stopped, glancing back to me.

I might as well have ripped my chest open and held my bleeding, beating heart up in the air as I raised my hand and waved at her, tears streaming down my cheeks.

She shook her head once, twitched her ear, and was gone.

I dropped my face into my palms and sobbed. Dropped my knees to the dirt and wailed. Dropped my heart down a big, deep, dark pit, never to be redeemed, and wept. My heart was breaking. I was sure of it, crushed beneath the pile of smoldering rubble I'd just diminished my entire shitty life down to. Edward's arms came around me, and I slumped into him.

"She's gone."

"I know. I saw."

He held me until I'd caught my breath, propping me upright against him to wipe my cheeks and calm my hair. "You never even gave her a name," he said, smoothing a hand across my forehead.

"I did, just now. I've been calling her it for a while actually but never out loud. Only in my head"

"Care to share?"

"Wakiya. It means Little Thunder."

"Fitting." He laughed.

"Using it felt wrong." I sniffed, closing my eyes under his attention and letting him attempt to clean me up. "She wasn't meant to be mine."

"I think you needed her for a bit, but maybe you don't anymore."

"Maybe I do."

He shook his head. "This isn't helping," he muttered, thumb rough against my cheek. "I'm just making a mess here."

We were both covered in soot. In ash and grime and dust. I was covered in a fresh layer of agony, and his was starting to harden into a shell I could feel, touch, lean against. I wasn't sure what we needed more: new lives or a long bath.

"I know a place. At the creek."

His eyes lit, up, a flash behind them that was equally mischievous and bashful. "Let's go get cleaned up. Nothing feels right when you're dirty."

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	37. Chapter 37

**Chapter 37**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

I removed my jacket from her shoulders as she sat on my lap by the side of the creek, using the inside of my shirt to wipe away what I could of the soot and dust that had settled on her. The grime and grunge that was made up of everything she'd ever owned had dissolved to dust. She cried silently every few minutes, her tears falling and making the dirt trails linger down her chin, drops of wreckage spotting her nightdress a speckled gray.

Her home was gone. The only place she'd ever lived was destroyed, still smoking and marking the ground beneath it with a black, angry spot. The nosy neighbors who never bothered to come by until there was drama didn't doubt her tears at the mouth of that fire. The firemen who responded looked at her with pity as they packed up their gear when all they could do was done. Of course the Swan girl was distraught, they nodded. What did she have, after all? No one. Nothing.

But Jake, maybe even Jasper, and _I_ knew that her tears were mostly falling in relief.

There was no question in my mind when she was being asked where she was and what did she know that I would step up and claim her whereabouts, and at the same time, claim her in front of all these people who whispered and cut behind her back.

And there was no question that the house needed to go. Even though I was shocked when I first saw the flames and realized what she'd done, I got it. I understood it. Understood the _why_ and the _need_.

So when she handed me that camera, the one thing I hated more than myself—there was no better place for it than the hell she'd created.

"It's all gone," she said as she sat limply on top of me. I stroked her arm and removed it from the sleeve of her soiled nightgown, black with soot and tainted by the smell of smoke.

"I know." I pulled her other arm out, and she shimmied her body to release the gown from underneath her. Up and over her head it went, and I wished I had some of that lilac-heady soap she'd used the first time I'd ever laid eyes on her.

"Edward, what did I do? I burned down my _house_." She pulled at the creek water and splashed it on her legs as I rubbed the dirt on her arms.

"I know."

"I got rid of everything I've ever known." Her eyes widened as the enormity of what she'd done hit her.

"I know."

"Edward." I looked up at her as I moved her to a standing position. "I _wanted_ it gone."

I smiled and stood to join her. "I know."

We lazily splashed some water on her and some on me, taking turns because my arms were pretty filthy as well. The soft buttery sound of water on skin was interrupted when she stood ramrod straight. "Oh, my God! Your camera! Edward, I—" She shook her head and slapped her hands on her dirty cheeks. "I don't know why I had it, I just left the attic in a hurry and—"

I cut her off. "Best place for it. I'm glad it's gone."

She sat back down on the grassy edge of the creek. "Me too. It was cursed."

Cursed.

Not a strong enough word. Relief that I didn't ever have to touch that thing again flowed through me so completely I didn't understand why I'd kept it in the first place. "What were you doing in the attic anyway?"

She looked up, slightly guilty. "I couldn't sleep. My feet just took me. I'm sorry."

I shook my head. "Don't be sorry. Just tell me what happened."

She continued rubbing at her skin, pink now, the same color as the flowers on the water lilies that pooled around her legs. "My house was staring at me from the window. The moon was so bright last night, and it made it look alive. Like that picture I hate…"

I nodded, waiting for her to continue.

"Your jacket was there—maybe I got chilly, maybe I wanted to feel you close to me, I don't know. I put it on, and I found a lighter. The initials EC. I didn't know you smoked… then?"

The lighter. The catalyst. "I didn't. It was Emmett's." She scrambled behind herself and rummaged through the pocket of the jacket.

"I didn't throw it in. I used one of Mom's old scarves to set it and threw that in." Her palm opened, and Emmett's lighter lay within. "Here."

My chest spasmed, remembering the lighter I'd given him on his 21st birthday to use on the cigars he insisted on smoking for every milestone of his life. His engagement, his first medal of honor, when he found out about my first award-winning photo. I didn't want it. But I didn't want it destroyed like I did the camera either. "You hang onto that for me, okay?" She nodded and closed her fist tight around the Zippo. "So you found the lighter, then what? You went to your house?"

She shook her head. "I looked at some of your pictures. All of the pictures I could only dream of taking. Even the horrible ones. You've lived so much and had so many experiences, and there I was, a stupid girl haunted by a house." She stopped and bit her lip. "I found the award."

"Should've taken that with you too." My stomach protested for real on that one. That fucking award my editor submitted me for. The one I had strived for so badly my whole career, turned into a prize for the monstrous act I'd committed. A trophy soaked in evil. "Burned it to hell."

"You never cashed the check."

"Blood money." I rolled my hand at her. "Then what happened?"

"I started playing with the lighter, and the house came into view. I could see the photograph it would make. The orange flame flickering bright in a dark attic, touching the silhouette of the house bathed in moonlight. Like a black and white picture bursting with energy in the middle. So I held the lighter up to kiss the house in my eye…" She shrugged and trailed off. I didn't need to hear the rest, fury began boiling within me at her as the adrenaline of the night wore off.

"You could've been hurt, Bella." My mouth tensed into a straight line, thinking about all the ways she could've been injured.

"I wasn't."

"But you _could've_ been." I walked away from her, my feet splashing the water and sending sparks of water across the surface. My hands fisted, and my eye pulsed—thinking about losing her made me ferocious. "You can't do that again. You can't take a chance with your life."

"I didn't—"

"I can't lose you too, Bella." I turned and stared hard at her. "I won't."

She looked at me for a long time, I couldn't guess what she was thinking. The water trickling over rocks was the only thing making a sound. "I don't know where I'm going, Edward. I have nowhere. I guess Jasper or Jake—"

"You'll be with me. It's obvious."

She sighed. "Is it? Are you sure you're ready for that? You've only had a few months to build your life back together. Think of yourself."

"I am." I kneeled in front of her, my jeans getting soaked as the water covered my thighs. "I saw you here once, when I first moved in." She looked at me, questioningly. "I was dirty from painting, sweaty and hot. The only thing I wanted to do was wash in the creek the realtor had told me existed on my property. I came across you bathing, and I thought you were a hallucination—you were so pretty."

Her hands covered mine on her knees, grasping my fingers and a blush forming on her chest. "I didn't mean to stare, I promise. But you were the most beautiful thing I'd seen in so long, in such a long time of seeing nothing but nightmares and horrible things, I couldn't help but try to capture the moment—a picture of you in my mind to keep for as long as possible."

"That's why you yelled at me in my garden that the creek was yours? I didn't understand."

I nodded, remembering the day of our first words, her scarf over her eye and my furious blood running through me. "All I wanted when I moved here was to be alone and pity myself, live out the rest of my life punishing myself, but there you were. I was so angry that you were near me, even though I was captivated from the moment I saw you."

I tried to catch my breath and my words. "I _do_ love you, Bella. I have since the moment I saw you. I didn't choose to finally say it as your house burned down because I thought you needed to hear it. I didn't throw it out there because I didn't know what else to say or because I thought it wouldn't be remembered."

I shifted closer to her, our chests pressed together as I wrapped my arms tightly around her waist. "I love you because you make me happy. And I haven't been happy in a very long time. And I _want_ to be happy."

New tears formed in her eyes. "I meant it, too," she whispered, before she kissed me squarely on the mouth and curled her hands around my neck. "I feel like I've always loved you, Edward. I just didn't know who you were."

* * *

Two cups of tea sat on the coffee table in front of us, Bella wrapped in a blanket and leaning against me as the words Jake just left with sat light in the air.

 _Most likely caused by a faulty electrical outlet in an old, rundown house. No suspicious activity detected. Case closed._

Investigations took weeks, not days. We both knew Jake had as much as possible to do with the swift decision to not probe any further. Perhaps the town was just as happy to close the book on the Swan house and all its stories and demons as Bella was.

It would be quite a while before any insurance money would come her way from the destruction of that house; that is, if there was any to be had at all. What little money Bella had saved up from her mom's welfare and disability payments would have to continue until Bella figured out what she wanted to do. The world was open to her, and without the house keeping her shackled like a prisoner, she'd started toying with ideas.

Sell handmade soap. Be a nanny. Work at the florists.

Not once did the obvious occur to her.

"Why not take photographs?" I asked, the irony not lost on me. "You could sell them. You have no idea how good you are."

"My world here will run out of inspiration very quickly."

I nodded, knowing she was right. What attracted me to this tiny town was what had always held her back. I couldn't keep her from growing, from sprouting from this earth and reaching for higher ground.

I'd have to let Bella live.

"What's this?" she asked as she stared at the rectangular piece of paper I'd laid in front of her on the kitchen table where she was rolling dough for a pie. Cherry, my favorite.

"Fifteen thousand dollars."

She looked at the check then at me.

I pushed it closer, the corner sliding into the flour. "You can't very well travel the earth with nothing, I hate to say."

She blinked a few times, her fingers squeezing into the dough. "I'm not taking your money. Especially not to leave you," she bit.

"I'm not giving it to you."

"I don't get it."

"I'm using it _with_ you."

Anger turned to confusion, skepticism, and then a small glimmer of what I hoped was, well, hope. "What do you mean?"

"When I said I wasn't going to lose you, I meant that. I won't. But I also won't make you stay in a place you've hated all your life because I'm too fucking scared to leave it. I want to see you explore the world, Bella. I want to watch your face as you see the sunrise over Machu Picchu. I want to be there the first time you float in the salt of the Dead Sea. I want to be by your side when you take the most extraordinary pictures of whatever captures your eye on this beautiful planet. Everywhere and everything."

"Edward…" Her flour-crusted hand reached up to wipe a tear sliding down her cheek. "Your sister-in-law—she needs you."

"She's leaving. Moving on. But that has nothing to do with my decision. It's a sliver of a string that got cut for me. She wouldn't want me to stay here for her anyway."

A smile formed then grew, big and bright on her face. "You want to travel with me?"

"Not just travel." I pulled her to me and wiped away the flour that had made its way to her hair.

"Bella, I want to spend the rest of my life watching you live yours."

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

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 **HB &PB**


	38. Chapter 38

**Badlands National Park, South Dakota**

 **~Bella~**

"Look what I have."

Edward tossed a plain brown envelope on the tailgate of the truck, and grinned at me. The sun was monstrously hot—no shade for miles—and he was sunkissed, squinting at me.

I snatched up the envelope, gasping at him. "They said it would take six weeks, at _least_."

"I know a couple people. Called in some favors." He shrugged as he winked at me. "You're welcome."

The package came from D.C. Forwarded through one Rosalie Cullen, to Interior, South Dakota, and then to the ranger's station where we were filling up water and using our cell phones. The signals were rare out here at best, and water was even more fleeting.

We'd driven east from that sad little town I grew up in. The moment the truck hit the highway, I started to breathe again—my blood started to pump again, and my heart kick-started under the rumble of rubber to asphalt. I stuck my feet out the window and laid down flat on the seat with my head in Edward's lap, studying a map and plotting our path away from everything I'd ever hated. The straight-for-days highways, the tiny towns that dotted the roadsides, the billboards for Jesus, and then those for porn. Windmills so tall, I felt like I was hallucinating.

We stopped at a post office in Topeka for a scant two hours before continuing north. North, I said, because the thought of heading down, driving south, felt contradictory to all my struggles to break the surface.

It felt like diving when I was already out of air.

We'd been out here for a week, the earth more alien than I'd even imagined it to be, painted pastel bluffs and oil-slick skies at sunset. We had a mattress in the bed of the truck and a map of the twisted roads, and we ventured out every day into the heatwaves, searching for photos. Trails that circled the fossilized sea bed, canyons that hid cool water streams, a week in the dust and the heat. I curled in toward Edward every night, snuggled up in his faded blue blanket under the stars, and I slept sounder than I ever had before.

The South Dakota skies.

The oven-baked Badlands.

"You need sunscreen."

"You need to open that." He pointed at the envelope

There was a handwritten note in the envelope, addressed to Edward, and signed by someone who referred to him as Eddie. A 'hope you're well, think of you often, when are you taking pictures again' missive he'd snatched from me and read with a scowl on his face. The box of cameras was on the floor in the cab, and there was still a small little beat of hope lodged deep in the muscle of my heart that someday I'd get him to do just what that long-gone friend wanted.

Set a camera back to his face. Capture the love and lust and hate and gore that made the world such a sticky, delicious mess. I felt like that was still a long way off but not worth abandoning hope for.

The only other thing in the envelope was a little blue embossed holder, my photo inside, pages and pages there for stamps like footprints left in concrete.

"One of the park rangers told me about a guy in Cactus Flat. Buys ancient pieces of shit." Edward kicked the bumper, and the truck groaned. "Let's dump this rust bucket and get the fuck outta Dodge."

"Just take off? Just like that?"

"Why not?" He smiled at me again, loose and easy, dust in his hair and something edging toward joy on his face. Kid in a candy store. Bull in a china shop. Moth to a pretty new flame.

"And go where?"

He flung his arms out to the sides and spun in the dirt, kicking up a tiny dust devil around his heels. "Anywhere. Anywhere you want."

My heart pounded awkwardly to a halt, and I was gone. Thrown so far, I closed my eyes as my stomach and my brain lurched along. Standing ankle deep in water lapping at a pink sand beach. On a yellow-flowered mountain top. In a forest so old, its stories were lost a hundred miles beneath its roots.

"Anywhere," I exhaled, eyes still shut tight as Edward scooped me off the tailgate, passport falling to the ground.

"The world is your oyster, Babe."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Anywhere you are."

I rolled my eyes at him. "Isn't there something you want to see? Something you still want to do?"

"I've seen it all. The good and the really fucking bad. As for me right now, I'm content to follow you, wherever you go."

He set me back on my feet, grabbing the atlas we'd been studying at night, his stories about the people and the food and the epic landscapes that made his heart feel broken but beating too hard all at once. Edward flipped pages until he found the world map, everything spread out there before us in a mishmosh of color and possibilities.

"Close your eyes," he whispered, wrapping his arms around my waist.

I did as he said, feeling lightheaded and too hot. Maybe the desert. Maybe him. Maybe the looming leap of a sharp right curve in the long plodding highway I'd been on, miles and miles stretched out before me in an endless straight line.

"Try not to pick the middle of the ocean, ok? I don't like boats." He chuckled and slid his hand over mine, waving it in the air over the page, whispering in my ear. "Point and shoot, Babe."

I heaved a breath and made my choice, eyes shut tight, fingerprint to paper.

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

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	39. Chapter 39

**Bora Bora, French Polynesia**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

Her finger actually did land right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so I moved the map while she was pointing and slid her towards Bora Bora.

Where we spent the first three days completely naked.

Having never seen an ocean before, Bella couldn't stop looking at the jaw-dropping beauty of the jewel-toned water. It was so clear she wasn't afraid to get in and swim around right off the deck of our private bungalow even though she really didn't know how. This resort was a splurge, sure, but after the months we'd had, I figured if anyone needed a vacation, it was us.

Watching her experience her first plane ride to leave everything she knew was as exciting to me as when I'd done it myself for the first time. The wonderment and awe in her eyes when she looked out the window to see her familiar grasslands and open fields dropping away almost brought a tear to my own. She squeezed my hand so tight, thanking me and making my heart full to bursting that I was able to bring someone so much joy.

As much as she'd brought me.

There was no doubt in my mind we'd done the right thing by leaving the U.S. behind when Bella picked up her adopted camera and blew through four rolls of film that first week. A roll devoted to the blue-green sea and the turtles that swam under our hut. Another in the outdoor shower trained on my laughing face, while my hands pushed her away from exposing too much of me, scolding her to not get the camera wet. A third and fourth were used to study how macro photography works—her tongue slipping out of her mouth slightly as she meticulously focused on the fragrant vanilla plants and the rubbery, bumpy surfaces of the noni fruit found throughout Taha'a.

Her face was relaxed, tinting bronze. Her laugh was free of ghosts, her walk easy, with a bit of sway I bet she'd never allowed herself. Her whole body seemed to unfurl itself from its misery to where I swore she was a full two inches taller as she wrapped herself around me while we watched the sunset.

Her house and life had fallen to ashes on the ground, but she was its stunning, unstoppable phoenix.

On the seventh day locked around each other, we decided it was time for an adventure, so we chartered a catamaran to take us to the base of Mount Pahia and Mount Otemanu, the two peaks of a dormant volcano that lived on the island. The trails were twisty and uneven, and I worried about Bella's stamina and athletic ability. I was used to rough terrain, covering dicey rock paths in heavy boots, so for me traversing them was no big deal in a pair of sneakers. I should've known not to worry about her, my girl who was blooming in front of my eyes. She took to hiking like she took to photography. Easy and without fear.

Taking a break after about a thirty minute climb when we had to hold onto a rope to gain ground, our tour guide wandered off to let us experience the jaw-dropping beauty in front of us on our own.

"This is what heaven must look like," Bella said as she stood slack-jawed with eyes wide. Orange hibiscus, red and yellow dahlias, and white water lilies surrounded us, and eventually Bella remembered to pull the cap off the camera that swung around her neck. She hesitated before fiddling with the instrument, a small smile playing across her face. "I hope my mother is there."

It was the first mention of her since the fire. "She is."

Just like Emmett.

Perched on the lush green foliage, the aqua blue water below us swirling and lapping lazily, I felt a sense of peace come over me as I thought of my brother. Standing still with my eyes closed, I imagined the last final fragment of a shattered soul being wiped away within me. I breathed deeply, thanking God and all those watching over me, that I was given a second chance to wonder at the beauty of life, and more importantly, the ability to recognize it.

The click and whir of the shutter sprung to life, and I watched as she crouched and moved, getting her shots of this heaven on earth. The nature before me might've been breathtaking and otherworldly, but the vision of Bella in front of me capturing moments that spoke to her was the most breathtaking of all.

So much so, I pulled out my phone and took a picture of her taking a picture of life, without a thought about what I was doing.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	40. Chapter 40

**Reykjavik, Iceland**

 **~Edward~**

* * *

The Reykjavik Museum of Photography was small, occupying just the top floor of the library building. Having been to numerous photography museums all over the world, I was itching to share this one with Bella as a first-time visitor.

Her gloved hand slipped into mine as we walked along one wall, the exhibit unfurling before us of a famous local police investigation. These shots were a new concept to her, grittier than what she'd been doing, and they reminded me of the beginning jobs I took to get to the end result of my career.

"All the black and white of these reminds me of a newspaper spread. Does that make sense? It's not picturesque, like a landscape capturing everyday life. There's a desperation to it."

"Exactly. You feel it in your bones—the anticipation, the drive these men had to find the truth. It's what you strive for on an assignment like this, that the viewer will be able to feel the intensity of the situation without having been there. It's good photojournalism."

"Did you ever do anything like this?" She pulled her fingers out of my hand to remove her glove, finally warmed from the frigid December air of Iceland.

"I did a feature of inmates in Folsom prison that ran in the Los Angeles Times. Pretty much started me in the direction I took." I said nothing else, the hard topic of my past something I'd shared more of with her over the last few months. She replied she wanted to see it someday and slipped her hand back into mine.

We strolled through the exhibit, Bella pointing out things she liked or didn't like, and I talked about how a shot was taken, or why the composition made it something more than just an ordinary photo. I loved that she continued to hang on every word, even though she was very much on her way to not needing my guidance anymore.

Being in a gallery still thrilled me. The stark walls, the shiny floors—all there just to showcase photographic art. When my pictures took over every inch of space, I never tired of it during my career. It was something I took great pride in. I'd stand off to the side, acting like I didn't care, but listening to the praise and accolades that always accompanied a show of mine. The image of Bella's photos lining a pristine, white wall came to me suddenly, and I wondered if it was something she'd ever want for herself.

She hadn't said it out loud, but I'd noticed she'd begun to think in terms of what she could do with her photographs. A stray question here or there about how and where I sold pictures, or how I managed to have coffee table books made, and so forth.

She'd amassed quite the collection of film canisters, now filling one whole backpack.

She took pictures of the nature of Australia— Uluru and the rough terrain of the bush—like she was thinking in future terms when she snapped them. She pushed herself harder, capturing nearly impossible shots at equally impossible angles. As she increased her physical challenges, I'd begun carrying a spare camera for her around my neck to change out her film as she went, so she wouldn't have to stop, carry camera bags, or lose her footing fumbling with the mechanisms.

When she changed cameras to get the picture of aboriginal children getting their faces painted for a ceremony, I noticed she had a few exposures left. I stared at the number in the window for a few minutes, an itch forming inside me. Instead of wasting them, I snapped her hesitantly, her hair wrapped up in a colorful scarf and her knees digging into the sandy earth.

In the Thai Nguyen province of Vietnam, while she was walking alongside a group of women working in the tea fields, I took a few of her quickly.

At the Road of Bones in Siberia, as she straddled the broken wood of an old bridge to take pictures of the roadside graves where thousands of Russian slaves had perished, I took my time and focused, adjusted my aperture and speed, and took a very intentional photograph for the first time in almost a year.

She told me later she didn't like that place—was distraught by the subject matter—and I thought about the ones I took. I knew I'd captured that feeling in her because that's what Edward Cullen did. That's what you would see. The hunched shoulders and grim expression of someone in pain.

 _If_ I ever got them developed.

I'd began marking any roll that had a shot of mine on it, so I'd have some warning once we developed them upon returning to the states. I would be able to cut them from the roll or do them myself, keeping my secret. I don't know why I stayed quiet about it. She'd be more than excited to know I'd taken some pictures, but I suppose I was still trying to reconcile how it made me feel and I didn't want to distract her from growing into what she was quickly becoming.

A few days after the museum visit, Bella walked into the hot springs in Reykjavik holding an elderly woman's hand. She had come here for relief from her troubled skin and _gömul bien_ , or "old bones" in Icelandic. They were both shaking from the cold, but as soon as they hit the water, they smiled and closed their eyes in relief. After a moment, Bella resurfaced to move to another spot, her white bikini almost see-through.

I took a picture of that, just for me.

I watched Bella float for a while in the steam the natural heat of the water made against the surface, making it foggy and dreamlike. Remembering our own fairy pond, I lost myself in daydreams as I marveled at how far we'd come. We were two strangers from completely different worlds, and now we were the one thing the other couldn't imagine life without.

And I couldn't stand to keep my hands off her one more second.

Taking off everything but my trunks, I briskly walked to the water and slipped into the surreal pale turquoise pool. Coming up next to her, I let my hands reach under her to lend support to her body as it lay on the surface. She opened her eyes and smiled.

"This is amazing." She stood upright and snaked her arms around my waist. "Our pond never felt like this."

I smiled at the fact we were always on the same page as my own arms wrapped her up and settled themselves against her ass. "We totally should've had sex in it before we left."

"Someday…" she drifted off and arched her body back so her hair was skimming the surface. My arms braced her, and her hands travelled across my skin, raising goosebumps. Her eyes fell to my mangled tattoo, partly scarred and hard to decipher. "I never asked. War?" Her finger traced a bump.

I nodded. "Same gunfire that nicked me in the eye when Emmett died." That sentence hung there between us. It was the first time I didn't feel wracking physical pain saying it. "I always meant to get it fixed."

Bella stroked the marred skin. "What was it? Looks like—"

"Film. A roll of film coming off the spool. Silly stuff done in lower Manhattan during a drunken weekend shooting wannabe rock stars."

"Let's get it fixed. Here in Iceland. And I'll get mine."

"You want a tattoo?" The thought of permanent ink on her pale skin something I wouldn't protest. Vines, flowers, mandalas—I could only imagine what she'd get.

"I want the same thing. In the same place." She kissed me, her hand snaking beneath the surface and cupping my cock. "We're a match."

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	41. Chapter 41

**Tuareg Territory, Northern Niger, Africa**

 **~Bella~**

* * *

I'd come to Africa prepared for anything, except snow.

Amadou was shaking the tent flaps, and I spluttered awake to goosebumps and his whisper through the dark. I didn't bother waking Edward. His sleeping came to him easier, less fight and more surrender, which made him impossible to wake. He needed it—his body catching up to him—so I tugged the blanket up over his shoulder and followed Amadou into the night.

We walked the sand as the sky began to pale, the silvery slip of moon chased down by the sun. I followed Amadou's tall shadow, shrouded in his indigo clothing, his footprints in the snow up the crest of a dune as he told me his grandmother's survival story. Lost on the desert, in a blizzard, nearly frozen to death, and then baked back to life.

For the first time in months, I felt that sickening wave of home roll over me.

Snow wasn't as rare here as I thought, contradictory as it was. Amadou had seen it once before, when he was just a boy and still believed in miracles. He warned me that it wouldn't last long, a few hours at best, and I took advantage of my meager time. Three rolls of film and half an hour after sunrise, Edward came loping up the dunes, a pinprick on the horizon growing steadily bigger as he approached. I took a progression of shots of him, the first rays of the snow-killing sun painting him in gold.

He handed me the camera he carried, pulling me in to press his lips to my forehead.

"Thought you might want this."

I nodded and clutched the old Nikon, his first camera feeling all too familiar to my fingertips. He rubbed his face as he looked off across the snowy sand drifts, a chill on the breeze. The beard he'd grown out during our month in Iceland, two weeks in an Italian village, six days in Istanbul, that week in Nairobi, was gone. Scruffy and scratchy in the very best of ways, I'd grown to like it, despite wanting it gone.

He'd emerged from our tent the first night we spent in Niger, clean-shaven.

Bright-eyed and smiling at me. His whole face—just the way I liked him.

I'd spent the last four days feeling oddly homesick. The flat grasslands and big empty sky reminded me so much of the Midwest that I'd woken up disoriented and unsure of myself every single morning we'd been here. Emerging from our tent and having to remind myself that this was real. That Edward was still sleeping somewhere behind me. That the sky might be the same, but the grass under my feet wasn't. That I wouldn't turn around and find myself shrouded in the looming shadow of my house, risen from a grave of fire and ghosts.

That I was free—really free— after a lifetime spent shackled to my mother's moods and my own fear.

I slipped my hand under the neck of my t-shirt as the sun broke the horizon line, fingers finding the rows of tiny scabs that now decorated my shoulder blade. Amadou had done it, a gift he offered me after I showed him to load film into a camera. I had gifted him with a camera, one he seemed to have a knack for that I didn't, and he returned my favor, insisting I take something of Africa with me when I left. I let him take a clean razor and a pot of ash burned clean and hot off the acacia trees to my skin. Tiny nicks that only hurt for a moment, his fingers rubbing soot into my flesh, leaving a design that looked like an exploding shadowed sun, forever etched onto my body. It was itchy and sore, but I'd wanted something to commemorate our nine months of travel before we flew back into reality, and I couldn't think of a better way to remember all of this than the sun at my back.

Our money was running low. There was still a little bit trickling in from the renters who had moved into Edward's house and the last of the insurance payout from the fire. I'd made some money here and there, selling photographs in street corner coffee shops or startup art galleries, if we stayed somewhere long enough to bother. Edward seemed unworried, telling me he had money saved up from years of making yet never spending, but I didn't know what was going to happen to us. When we would stop moving or where. I wasn't sure if either of us could put down roots or love a place enough to stay.

The thought of making that decision made me nervous, so I'd been avoiding it like a bad dream.

* * *

Amadou was right—the snow lasted a meager three hours. I filled thirteen rolls before we abandoned the dunes for our breakfast.

"We'll need to visit Niamey soon. Send these off." I added my snow photos to the growing stockpile of elephants marching the horizon, glowing lion eyes in the dark. I'd tried to develop my own film in a bathroom in Russia, but I ruined two entire rolls before I gave up—too much light creeping in through cracks in the linoleum, and not enough developer in the entire city of Izhevsk. I'd lost another roll at a cheap convenience store in Japan and had another two destroyed by an underpaid employee in a camera shop in Rio before I gave up.

We had been sending all of my film to Rose ever since, our year in photos waiting for us when we finally returned to the States. Edward called it safekeeping, but I'd begun to think of it as something that tied me back, a tether around my ankle tugging me home.

A breadcrumb trail through the world in case I forgot my way.

* * *

 **Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.**

 **Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!**

 **HB &PB**


	42. Chapter 42

**San Francisco, USA**

* * *

~ **Bella~**

We were thirty-seven stories high in a beautiful suite overlooking the city. Twenty-three hours stateside, but we hadn't even ventured from our bed. Room service brunch between bouts of sleeping and sex—jet lag at its finest. I didn't put any clothes on all day and spent the entirety of it lying in that plushy bed, reading the manual to my new camera, a Nikon D5, one I thought was way too expensive, but Edward insisted that I had earned. It was the first digital I had held since the haunted camera, and I was nervous—thumbing pages, growing equally excited and scared.

Sometime late in the afternoon, after staring at his phone for a while, Edward flung himself on top of me, tossing the camera manual aside and kissing me everywhere he could reach between my giggles. "I have to go," he muttered between my boobs, sounding like he didn't want to do that at all.

"Why?" I tried to hold him closer, but he pulled up onto his palms to stare down at me.

"Rose is downstairs. I'd like to go have a drink with her." He looked as though he didn't want to tell me he needed to do it alone. His mouth scrunched up and I nodded, loosening my grip on his shoulders, a silent agreement between us that we didn't have to put to words.

"When do I get to meet her?"

"Tonight, we'll have dinner together." He eyed the manual lying forgotten beside me, tilting his chin toward it.

"Got the hang of that thing?"

"Maybe. It has a really high ISO, and 14 fps, so I can shoot dark and fast."

His eyebrows perked. "Strange as it may sound, you talking camera stats is almost sexier than that shit you did in bed last night."

I watched his eyes glaze over and his teeth dig into his lip before he descended on me, my own words clanging through my head. The strip of cloth we'd used was still tangled up in the bed sheets, a repurposed sash from a dress I bought in Greece. Deep emerald green, light cotton. I could still see him standing by the bed, hovering over me, winding it around his fist as he decided where to start.

"153 point AF," I exhaled, pulling him into my neck, and he groaned into my hair.

"Active D-lighting technology."

His teeth found my ear.

"Advanced scene recognition."

"Ok, now I really have to go," Edward grumbled. He stood, straightening his clothes and patting down his hair. "Give me a couple of hours with her, but be ready for dinner."

I stayed plastered to the bed, eventually pulling the camera to my eye and snapping a few exploratory shots of the hotel room, trying to get used to the lighting, the apertures, turning off as many of the automatic functions as I could. I still loved the precision, the adjustments, and wanted to work for my photos more than this camera allowed at first. By the time dusk had started to fall, I was over my hesitation and excited to test this new friend out in the wild.

I showered and put on a dress, waiting for Edward and growing hungrier by the minute. At seven, the phone rang, him clearing his throat on the other end of the line.

Two words, and then a dial tone.

"Come downstairs."

The elevator doors opened on a crowd of people milling the hotel lobby. I stepped into the melee, scanning for Edward.

I knew her before she even smiled at me.

"Bella," Rose said, reaching for me as I neared, my name splitting her mouth into a wide grin. She had been leaning against the wall watching the crowd huddled around the entrance to what looked like a reception hall but straightened the moment she saw me. Her fingers wound through mine, and she tucked herself up close. "I'm so happy you're here."

"Edward talks about you all the time. I'm glad we're finally meeting each other." I held her hand tight in response, a wave of something warm and familiar washing over me.

A new influx of people poured through the front doors, joining the masses of black suits, tuxedos, and evenings gowns entering the gated entrance into some sort of ticket-only event. I huddled closer to Rose, jostled by the woman next to me. "Someone's important," I grumbled.

Rose smiled slyly at the crowd. "I would have booked a larger space if I had known this would happen."

"This is for you?"

She shook her head. "No, not me. Everyone is buzzing about you already."

I stared at her blankly..

"Come on—I don't care where Edward is. I want to be the one to show you."

Rose pulled me by the hand through the crowd, bypassing two women handing out booklets at the entrance. She ignored a couple of advances, men in expensive suits with their eyes on us and women who were looking at me like they already knew me. Parting the crowd just like that woman from Sparrow's stories, her knife splitting the storm.

The room was larger than it appeared, with lofted ceilings, soft overhead lighting, and photographs blown up big and bold and bright on the stark white walls. My heart reared as we stopped in front of the two closest photographs, hung one beside the other like a pair.

I recognized the left one instantly—a shot I'd taken of the Serengeti, bleak and empty and burning hot, a lonely tree piercing the big red sun on the horizon. The other photo seemed oddly reminiscent: same flat horizon, same single stunted tree, same empty sky. The only difference was the girl standing there, long brown hair tied in a high knot on top of her head, hunched in front of a tripod camera, frayed shorts and a filmy white button-down shirt, six sizes too big for her.

Edward's shirt.

"Is that… ?"

"Your photo. And his." Rose nodded, another face-eating grin. She was watching me, waiting for my reaction, but I could only stare and stare and stare. I could taste the dust. Could see the heat. Could feel the sun beating down on me and his voice clanging through my head. I could remember the way he'd smiled at me when I looked back at him, the way he'd been touching the camera as though he'd just loaded a fresh roll of film for me. The way we talked about lens flares and heat stroke and what we would have for dinner that night. The cool sip of water before I ventured back out into the grass. The shot I'd taken just as the sun touched the earth, the horizon of my photo matching up perfectly with the one hung next to it.

My heart started hammering in my ears.

A silhouette against the raging red sun, chasing the last fading rays of the day. A photograph of me, crouched over my camera, getting sunburned.

A photograph that Edward had taken.

* * *

 **~Edward~**

"Edward, it's really good to see you." Rose grabbed me tightly, and I squeezed her in return. We stood like that for a few moments, both of us laughing and happy.

"You look fantastic." I held her arms out and looked at her black suit, an American flag pinned to her lapel. "San Francisco agrees with you."

"And I'd say almost a year of travelling agrees with you. Edward. I've never seen you so happy."

I shrugged and let a small smile grow. "These months have been… everything. Relaxing, adrenaline-filled, challenging. It's really brought me back around mentally to that guy I lost. I needed it."

She gave me a sly look. "And this metamorphosis has nothing to do with your travelling companion?"

"Oh, it absolutely does. Getting back out there was good for me. Helped get my head right again. I don't know." I paused and looked at her. "I feel more like the guy I was supposed to be."

"He was always in there." She patted the front of my shirt. "But you have to change into the suit I bought you; it's in my room." We turned towards the gallery space Rose secured weeks ago. "The pictures are amazing."

"She's good, isn't she? I'm not just blinded by her?" I trusted Rose, her instincts. She'd always been right about my own stuff, my career, and she led me confidently through every phase. She would never talk me up to soothe my ego, was never afraid to speak her truth, even if it was a harsh assessment, and the petulant artist in me wouldn't speak to her for days.

"She's good. Raw and unbiased, untouched. Which is what I think I like most about her." Rose grabbed my hand and nodded towards the doors. "You okay?"

"I'm great."

Together, we walked into the familiar setting. White walls, spotlights appropriately placed, shining, gleaming floors. Even though I'd been in a gallery in Iceland recently, I felt the back of my neck prickle and my hands tingle slightly. I shook them out and relaxed as my excitement grew, knowing full well why I was there and knowing that it had nothing to do with me.

Bella's name hung in large, black lettering above the welcome area. My heart swelled with pride, and I was anxious to see her prints enlarged and mounted, waiting for the world to discover them. "You know, when you emailed me that you'd developed the film, I was a little ticked off."

"I figured you would be, but I couldn't help myself. It was like sending wrapped Christmas gifts to a six-year-old at Thanksgiving. Just trust me that I did what I thought you would, right? In terms of composition and what you'd show."

"I trust you. Bella, on the other hand, might be mad." I laughed. "She's been sorely missing developing. I really hope she's excited by this plan of yours."

"I think she'll be okay with what I've done." We walked farther into the gallery, and I recognized Bella's print of an acacia tree immediately. It was bold and intense, bringing me back to Africa and all its heat. I felt the beauty of it in my chest.

What didn't make any sense to me, however, was the print mounted directly next to it.

It was Bella in my white shirt, taking the picture that hung alongside that one.

Mine.

"Rose, you developed my film." I clenched my palms together, trying to shake the clammy feeling that was fast approaching.

She held her hands out to me. "Before you say anything, let me explain."

I glanced around the space quickly, noticing my own name, on the opposite wall of Bella's, in the same bold lettering. Every wall had pairs of photographs lined up all along them. "Those are _my_ pictures."

"They're yours, and hers. Together. The way they should be. I don't even think you realize what you had been doing all along. Each photo I found on a roll of hers, I found the counterpart to on another. Do you know how long it took me to piece all of these together? I _had_ to develop everything once I realized what I had discovered. While she took her pictures, you were there, in the background, taking your own."

"They were for me. They were just for me to capture what she was doing."

"So? What does it matter what their purpose was? The end result is stunning. Just look." She turned me and pushed me towards the opposite wall.

Bella's on the left, a stunning shot of a shifting sand dune hit by late day sun, with mine directly next to it. A similar vista, a similar scene, but my subject was the photographer at work.

Over and over, pairs upon pairs. Twins and couples. And I had to admit, it made for a remarkable effect.

I felt Rose lay her head on my shoulder, her arm snaking through mine. "Edward, you're taking pictures again. You have no idea how significant that is. And how sorely missed you've been."

"This wasn't my intention."

"But what do you _think_?" She waited for me to answer as the wheels turned in my head.

I had taken these pictures. I had done it purposely. It had been almost organic—the way I picked up that camera, without giving myself much time to question it. It had been something I swore I'd never do again as I stood covered in shame, over a year ago. Looking at them now, on display for the world to see, my heart wasn't pounding, my eyes weren't bleeding, my guilt wasn't enveloping me. I had never intended for them to see the light of day, but they fit perfectly alongside my rising star.

Because it was _her_ I was photographing. It was all about _her_.

"I can't promise I'll ever photograph anything but this subject."

Rose nodded against me. "I'm okay with that. Doesn't matter how or why you started, just that you _did_. You _are_."

"I'm not 'back'."

"Whatever you say, Boss."

* * *

 **~Bella~**

Rose ushered me through the crowd, fending off advances from strangers and pressing a glass of champagne into my shaking hands. We stopped before wall after wall after wall of the same picture pairs. Tango dances pinned flat before us as the two images talked back and forth.

My name on one plaque, and his on another, steadfast in our own right but even better together.

Better, so much better together.

Those pink sand beaches, pastel perfection under a mottled, melancholy sky and me sitting waist-deep in the water, with mermaid hair, a barely-there bikini and a sunburn, Edward's Canon pressed to my face.

A crumpled stone wall in England, dappled in green moss and silvery lichen, tiny dewdrops and pinprick flowers—a miniature forest from half an inch away—and me, pressing down so close that my hair was fanned out along the wall behind me, camera lens nearly touching the moss.

A perfection shot, the kind you can only hope for. A canyon, padded in lush jungle, early morning clouds sitting low and pale pink as the sun broke somewhere beyond them. The lens had been fogging up all morning, and the edges of the shot were splattered with raindrops, but I didn't even care. The feeling of it, if you settled in hard enough, was weightless. As though your wings had caught a draft and you were hovering midair, watching those clouds melt back into the sky. The truth was a slender high-wire bridge slung long and low through the fog, and me, tiny and still with a big camera jutting from my face, way down in the very middle of it.

My heart hadn't stopped hammering. Stomach hadn't stopped tumbling. Breath coming short and blood rushing way too fast, clutching Rose to stay upright as the reality hit me. Whispers from the crowd around us, the lights bright and the room warm and I was spinning.

I hadn't known.

I hadn't even known he was behind me, capturing images all along the way.

Capturing _me_ , all along the way.

"There he is, finally," Rose huffed, and I dragged my eyes from the photos to Edward snaking his way through the crowd, stalled by handshakes left and right. He was wearing a suit I'd never seen before, a tie hanging loose as if he'd been pulling on it. Skin gone golden from hours in the sun, hair grown out soft and wild. That curve of his grin. The easy lope of his walk. The soft set of his face. The flash in his eyes.

My stomach turned over again, a hurricane in my belly as the champagne glass trembled in my hand.

"Rose." He smiled and let her kiss his cheek, her hand squeezing mine one last time before she disappeared and left me standing there in front of him. He tucked his hands in his pockets and grinned at me.

I had so much to say. So much to ask. I opened my mouth, fumbling for words, feeling too many eyes on us for something that felt so private.

"Some show, huh?"

"It's…I— " I wobbled through a wasteland of half-formed thoughts, struggling to find the surface. The awe must have been apparent, even if I wasn't making any sense. He reached out to take the shivering champagne glass from my unsteady fingers, draining it with one gulp and discarding it on a table nearby. His fingers curled around my hand, soft and warm as he tugged me close.

"I have something to show you," he whispered.

He led me through the crowd, faces turning to stare,but everyone smiling as we passed. I held onto his jacket, daring myself to smile back but failing every time, keeping my eyes on the black fabric bunched in my hand. Edward stopped before a hallway cordoned off with a red velvet rope and heavy black curtains. He unclipped the rope and ushered me through, leaving the bright room and the big crowd with its hum of noise behind us. We walked down the shadowed hallway in silence, his hand curled over mine, to a single door at the end. He stopped before it and kissed my knuckles.

"This part is yours," he whispered, nudging the door open.

The room was smaller, quiet, and lit in soft white-yellow lights, a golden glow kissing the photographs scattered along dark grey partitions. Edward leaned against the open door as I walked through the small space, feeling much like I was stepping through someone's inner sanctuary, straight into the warm, throbbing chambers of their heart.

Our first rolls of film.

The beginning.

Some walls were scattered with an explosion of images, the broken snapshot story of him trying to capture my smile without looking, the blurry palms obscuring my face, wild flashes of teeth and hair and prairie. One space was dedicated to images of Edward painting his house, half naked on a ladder, bent double in the grass, a close up of his paint-splattered hands, dripping rainbow buckets in the grass. There was the very first photo I'd ever taken, hung all by itself. Edward's kitchen with him chopping tomatoes at the counter in the late afternoon, sharp lines blurred, solid swatches of sunlight piercing the air. Another solo wall, the photo of my house— the one that had sent me into such a spin, the one with the flash of light splicing through it like a message from the dead.

The fawn.

So many of her.

 _Little Thunder._

She was still buried so deep in me—I never even talked about her for fear of the sharp stab of pain I always got when I did. My momentary angel, appearing when I needed her and disappearing when I didn't anymore. Her silhouette, those perked ears and slender legs, down at the end of a long dark hallway. Curled up small and mottled in a bed of blue indigo, my bathrobe she'd dragged down the stairs and made a bed of on the porch. Snuggled up on the couch, in the bathtub, on Edward in bed, in my arms. Waiting patiently at the bottom of Edward's ladder. My heart ached ferociously at a close up of her face—simple, honest, the big black eyes and the long lashes and the right ear flicked out to the side.

I tore myself from her, standing wide-eyed and suddenly warm in front of two images from his bed. Both of them rubbed so hard up against the barrier of immoral art that the skin had broken. Rough and raw, black and white, his hand clenched deep into the swell of my hip, another disappearing between my legs, his teeth in my skin, my head heavy against his shoulder, toes curled in the sheets. Sex softened by the shake of my hands and the glow of the moonlight

I looked at Edward, still leaning in the doorway, watching me with careful eyes.

"I can't believe you did this," I whispered, my voice echoing in the small, empty room.

"I didn't. It was Rose. She started developing the rolls of film we sent home, put this whole thing together. She showed me this morning, I didn't know anything until a few hours ago."

"No, I mean…" I glanced around, swallowing the overwhelming panic creeping up my throat. "Edward, my pictures are hanging on a wall. A _gallery_ wall." I pointed towards the other room. "All those people want to be here? To see our pictures?"

"They do." He chuckled. "Look at all of this, Bella. Look." He flung his hand out to the soft, quiet room we stood in and the noise bustling in from the big crowded one down the hallway. The easy smile on his face was something I was still getting used to, and he crushed me with it again, beaming at me. "It's amazing. You're amazing."

"But I'm not even a photographer. I'm just some girl with a camera and too much time on my hands."

"You _are_." He took a step into the room, closing the space between us. "You're one of the best photographers I've ever met. I think it's because no one tried to teach you. No one told you how to do it, or how _not_ to. You just did what you thought was right. And it works."

" _You_ taught me," I countered, unsteady and uncertain.

He shrugged. "Sort of. But you found me at a time when I didn't want anything to do with cameras ever again. There's more to photography than loading film or developing it. I don't know how different you would have been if I was…" His eyes fell to the floor between us. "If you had a better teacher, where would you be now?"

"Not where I'm supposed to be." I slid my foot across the floor, needing to be closer—that panic in my throat turning into something lighter, something liquid and shapeshifting. A lump of secret thrill lodged between my lungs and my ribs, squeezing a pleasant ache in my chest with every breath. "Not with you."

I thought about those photos hanging on the walls in that big, bright space. The thousands of hungry eyes eating them up. The name plates beneath them, the newcomer and the long-lost golden boy, returning from the land of the damned. How they must have crowed with excitement at the return of Edward Cullen—unannounced, unplanned, sprung on them without warning. I thought of the painful way he'd treated those cameras in the beginning, barely looking at them, refusing to touch them. About how he'd given me the box of his foregone life because he didn't want it anymore. The knife lodged in the kitchen wall. The ghost stuck in that digital. The vow to never take another photograph ever again. The tattoos that marked both of us, his re-touched and mine brand new.

The long, hard road we'd trudged together and how it ended there, in that room, with his photos hanging on a wall.

"You…" I stuttered. "Edward, you took pictures. The whole time and I didn't even know."

* * *

 **~Edward~**

"Not the whole time."

It hadn't come as easy as she'd thought or made it sound. I couldn't lie to myself about either of us. We'd fixed nothing. The broken bits inside of me were still just as broken. There were still a few nightmares. There were still small outbursts. There were still treacherous stretches of territory we hadn't even come close to crossing. I hadn't fixed her either, much as I wanted to. We'd hardly spoken about our tumultuous beginning in the year we'd been traveling. Neither of us had managed to become the magic salve to soothe each other's burns.

But here we were, anyway.

I stepped closer to her, both of my hands grabbing hers and pulling them to rest between us as one lone finger traced the ink on her arm. "If you notice, I didn't take pictures of just any subject."

"You did—" she said, but I cut her off.

"They're all pictures of _you_ , Bella."

My muse. My salvation.

I kissed her, full of unspoken gratitude for helping me rebuild a shattered life of self-inflicted misery and pain.

"I only ever want to take pictures of you."

* * *

 **THE END**


	43. Chapter 43

Whew.

That was fun! Thank you for reading along with us.

We want to start this epically long A/N with a round of applause for you guys, our readers. Most of you were there with us from the beginning and passionately rooted for these two troubled kids to find their HEA. We hope that you are happy with where they are now, and we hope we gave you everything you wanted. We loved interacting with you, and the time you took to reach out and let us know what you were thinking and feeling; it is not something we take for granted.

We think most of you figured it out, but Bee wrote Bella, and PB wrote Edward. If you didn't, well, there you go. There's the answer you wanted in your review ;) We can't say that this collab will ever happen again, but you never know what might pop up. Follow us if you choose.

We want to take some time to personally thank our team. This story took a team of dedicated people and we hope you take the time to read this. We wouldn't be here, at the end, without them.

First of all, Mina Rivera for the awesome banner. As we said in our very first A/N, she put up with two writers who had very different ideas (or no ideas at all) and molded these scattered thoughts into one, perfect, beautiful banner. It was everything we had in our heads but could not put into words for her. Thank you, Mina.

Now, the next three ladies, well, they're special. All three of them took on an author they had never worked with before, and a story that felt like a monster at first.

LayAtHomeMom was our pre-reader. She enthusiastically jumped in with both feet to make this story readable and relatable. We appreciated her witty, keen eye, her blunt honesty, and the fact that she didn't throw us out the window after pointing out the eight hundredth usage of the word 'old.' Nothing compares 2 U, Pal. Thank you, Lay.

Hadley Hemingway was one of our betas. She worked diligently on this monster, even while maintaining a very hectic personal life, giving us so much of her time she should be on a payroll somewhere. It was her patio where we dreamed up the initial conception of this story, and she has been giving us her guidance from the get-go. We put her doctorate to work, picking her brain to help build, break, and then mend the minds and hearts of our characters. She, in turn, forced us to curb hundreds of run-on sentences, forced us to clarify our half-formed thoughts, and nit-picked our comma usage like a pro. Her research into major issues (where is this story even located?) and minor (can deer even eat that?) was incomparable and we are in awe of her dedication to us. You are a pretty flower in our meadow. Thank you, Hadley.

CarrieZM was our other beta. She cleaned us up and cheered us on, also while working and dealing with a crazy-hectic RL. As with Hadley, she was there from the very first conversation and devotedly hung in there, pushing us along while we figured things out. Her empathy for our characters, her insights into their motivations and desires, and her straight-forward candor molded this story into something better than we brought to her. With commas in the right places, too! But mostly, her initial thoughts on the whole gigantic mess really guided us and formed it into what it became. You are a queen, BB. Thank you, Carrie.

So, thank you team BlueMeadow, from the bottom of our soulless hearts.

We love you three like whoa.

Peace out, people,

Honeybee and Planetblue

* * *

 **NOW… (yes, there's more lol) we are each gonna take the floor alone for the first time in months. PB taking the mic...**

I can't end this without shouting out to the person I _really_ couldn't have done it without. My dear Bee, I have this to say to you:

I never thought I'd do it. I never thought I'd write with someone else. The thought was scary and demented, and I honestly didn't see any way two completely different writers could come to any sort of agreement - on storyline, character development, betas, posting schedules, review reply etiquette... it seemed so massive and unruly, I just thought there was no way this would go smoothly.

I am thrilled to have been proven wrong.

Nothing could have been less stressful or less painful. We had our bumps in the beginning, mostly both of us getting serious about doing it, and I'll admit my hesitancy stemmed from a lot of what I describe above. The entire road to posting seemed full of nothing but obstacles to me: a huge monolith, a deep ocean, a rocky mountain I couldn't fathom scaling. But damn, girl. How happy am I that we just could not let the idea of Deer Girl and Patchward go? Insanely happy. I know they haunted both of us, and I thank the universe for that, and I thank you for not letting me go. For whatever reason, this story needed to exist.

It's been a joy, truly, to share writing skills and the whole writing process with you. There's a different sort of feeling when you share and take responsibility for words with someone else, and I am honored that my first time was with you. You are so damn talented, and I worried I wouldn't be able to measure up to you. So thank you, Bee, for handling and loving my words, and treating them like they were your own.

I will miss talking with you about it as it dies down in the fandom, and there's no longer any need to discuss it. I will miss endless text messages and hour long phone calls. I will miss bouncing ideas off of you and laughing at the stupid ones.

But we have this friendship now, this bond, that hopefully will not die with the trickling end of the Twific universe.

So here's to tattoos, brown butter sea salt cookies, pic research, and us.

Love you like crazy.

* * *

Letter to Blue

Inspired by the poem Fight For Love, by Andrea Gibson

Maybe, it was that time you sent me a link to a song you loved and told me it reminded you of me, and I decided you were the absolute worst for thinking that I didn't already love that song for ages and ages and wasn't already mentally married to the lead singer.

Maybe it was that time I sent you a link to a song that reminded me of you, and you told me that you already loved it.

Well played.

Maybe it was the tattoo lust, or the badlands writer-envy, or the infuriating way you can always keep your cards close to your chest even when plied with booze and promises and I worried that we'd never connect because I can hardly keep my mouth shut if you get me drunk and I def hate-read Badlands because I wanted it to be mine.

Maybe it was when you said something elitist like ' _you cannot write a whole story without a plot_ ,' or ' _maybe we should figure out what the fuck is going on here before we just keep blindly writing ourselves into the void,_ ' and I said something dramatic like ' _I'd rather have a story with no plot than a lifeless, predictable pile of bullshit_ ,' and you agreed.

Maybe it was that time we sat silent on the phone for almost twenty minutes and then came to the exact same conclusion at the exact same time.

Maybe it was because that summary was the easiest one I've ever written because you like being vague as fuck too.

Maybe it was when you talked me out of killing the fawn.

Please, destroy my death wishes... if it keeps me dragging myself back into the same damn gdoc for five friggen years to call you the writer I've been waiting, word for word, for.

Thank you for beating my ' _let's write with no plot_ ' with ' _let's go dark_.' You were so right.

Thank you for giggling on the phone with me after our first lemon while we discussed how awkward it was to write with each other in mind and then telling me that he wanted to give her his cameras.

Thank you for making fun of our Guest troll just as harshly as I did and thank you for talking me down off my facebook soapbox because SCRABBLED TO MY FEET is an actual thing, people. Scrambled is for beginners.

Thank you for getting a tattoo with me.

Thank you for still sending me songs that you love.

What's next?

HB


End file.
